Life in Estonia, spring 2013. Global Business Services

SPRING I 2013

Tanel Veenre’s Kingdom And Trophies

Diana Mikita: Come Film In Estonia!

Music Scene Is Buzzing

Mobile Payments And Parking

Estonian Culinary Powers

SPECIAL! Global

Business Services

land & people I state & society I economy & business I science & innovation I culture & entertainment I tourism

A Billion-Euro Success Story

CoverDiana MikitaPhoto: Jaanar Nikker

executive publisherPositive ProjectsPärnu mnt 69, 10134 Tallinn, [email protected]

editorReet [email protected]

TranslationIngrid HübscherAmbassador Translation Agency

Language editorRichard Adang

Design & LayoutPositive Design

Partner

SPRING 2013 I LIFe IN eSToNIA 3

Estonia’s secret to success: smart, dynamic, and global from the startMy favourite compliment for Estonia came from an American investor –

Estonia punches far above its weight class.

While innovative projects like eHealth and eRx records, national ID cards, and eVot-

ing have dwindled or died elsewhere even with Google’s patronage and financing, in

Estonia all of these innovations have already been successfully implemented country-

wide for almost five years. Over the same period, Estonia has also been leading the

European Union with the fastest growth in investments into research, development

and innovation. Estonia takes its innovation to heart, and even the President Toomas

Hendrik Ilves lends his support for the cause, by making a point of actively promoting

innovative Estonian companies in speeches and on his foreign visits. These successes

and more have led the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and other observers to

applaud the Estonian entrepreneurial spirit and exceptional speed with which innova-

tions can be created and adopted in Estonia.

For Estonians really there was no other way - while the sparsely populated Nordic

countryside is beautiful, there are no natural resources to fall back on. Fortunately,

the age of smokestacks and concrete is past, and now intellectual and intangible

capital accounts for over 90% of the value of successful companies. Now, the Esto-

nian economy is able to scale and compete on an international level through speed of

innovation, flexibility, and specialisation in high-value services.

Already 50% of the added value in the Estonian GDP is produced by “knowledge

based” businesses such as those in the IT, design, finance, advisory, medicine, and

biotech sectors. Estonian leaders have supported the switch to a knowledge economy

by supporting the creation on venture capital funds, reforming the higher education

system to align skills with the job market needs while providing free university tuition

for everyone, and are implementing additional measures to further catalyse key knowl-

edge sectors. Estonia now offers a dynamic pool of exciting companies, each of which

is bringing innovation to the global markets.

The Estonian Service Industry Association is a lobby organisation that unites the best

of the Estonian knowledge economy. We believe that creating, exploiting and com-

mercialising new ideas, designs and technologies is essential to succeed in the global

race for competitiveness. Our members are the key drivers of Estonia’s economic growth

and productivity. We are proud that some our members like Skype and Nortal have be-

come household names, and excited about our members’ achievements in the past

year: Fortumo (mobile billing solutions) for receiving a $10 million A-round investment

from Intel Capital and Graycroft, and Grab-

Cad (worlds largest engineering and design

community) raising over $13 million in two

rounds from Charles River Ventures, Atlas

Ventures and Matrix Partners. The fact that

international Tier 1 investors of this calibre

see exceptional value in Estonian companies

shows how internationally competitive our

knowledge economy has become.

Yrjö Ojasaar

Estonian Service Industry Association,

Chairman of the Board

SPrING_2013

6 Where to go this season? Life in Estonia recommends

8 News

12 Taking Estonian Cuisine To New Heights

The grand master and promoter of Es-

tonian gastronomy, the cuisinier Dimitri

Demjanov, has been on a courageous

mission, taking local cooking from its

black earthy roots to the stars of the

culinary world. Estonia has participated

three times at the Bocuse d’Or, held in

France, and this year Heidi Pinnak won

Estonia the highest place to date (14th).

18 The World of Shared ServicesTom Bangemann, Senior Vice President Business Transformation at The

Hackett Group introduces the history and present day of shared services

- the most successful service delivery model of all time.

20 What Does Estonia Offer for Doing Business in the Financial Sector?

Mae Hansen, CEO of FinanceEstonia, lists the facts and global in-

dices which show Estonia’s effort in developing a beneficial business

environment.

22 Statoil Fuel & Retail Enjoys Having Estonia as A Location for its Finance Centre

In 2010, the road transport fuel re-

tailer Statoil Fuel & Retail established

its finance centre in Tallinn. Veiko

Haavapuu, Director of Statoil Fuel &

Retail Finance Centre, says that Esto-

nia continues to offer many advan-

tages as a location for them.

24 ERGO Brings Its Baltic Head Office To Estonia

ERGO decided to merge all non-life insurance companies in the Baltics

into one European company and establish the head office in Estonia.

Life in Estonia asked Dr. Kęstutis Bagdonavičius, Chairman of the Man-

agement Board of the ERGO Insurance Group in the Baltic states, what

the reasons for such a decision were.

26 Fujitsu Manages Scandinavian IT From Estonia

Five years ago Fujitsu moved its IT management department from Fin-

land to Estonia. As the IT service centre has proven successful, Fujitsu

has decided to also open its financial services centre in Estonia.

28 The Nordic Customers of Gas Giant AGA Serviced From Estonia

For the last seven years, the industrial gas company AGA has been serv-

ing its customers in the Nordics from Tallinn. The Estonian back office of

the company continues to expand as jobs are being moved across the

Gulf of Finland to Estonia.

30 The Billion-Euro Success Story

The SEB Wealth Management Competence Centre for Eastern Europe is

situated in Estonia. How is daily cooperation with the head office organ-

ised and what are the main challenges? Read what Sven Kunsing, Board

member of the SEB Wealth Management Estonia, has to say.

33 Powering Mobile Payments for the World

Fortumo is the largest mobile payments provider in the world in terms

of coverage, operating in 73 countries and working with companies

such as Microsoft, Rovio and Electronic Arts. What exactly are mobile

payments and how has Fortumo managed to capture the market?

35 “Already My Grandpa Knew How To Park His Horse With His Mobile Phone”

Üllar Jaaksoo, Head of NOW!Innovations, a company developing mo-

bile payment solutions, reveals why internationally, Estonia and mobile

parking have become almost synonyms.

I CONTENT

LIFe IN eSToNIA I 2013 SPRING4

SPrING_201350 Tanel Veenre’s

Kingdom And TrophiesTanel Veenre (36) is a jewellery designer who has made an interna-

tional breakthrough. Yet Veenre is also a design journalist, book au-

thor, photographer, initiator of fashion events and projects, and a

lecturer. How does he manage it all?

51 PORTFOLIO Jewellery by Tanel Veenre

62 Nafta Attracts International Film Producers To Estonia

Nafta, a film production company found-

ed eight years ago, has recently started

looking for foreign partners. Their aim

is to attract film producers to come and

shoot in Estonia. What has Estonia to

offer? Read what producers Esko Rips

and Diana Mikita have to say.

66 The Grand Old Man of Freaky Film History

The Estonian-American film director and producer Bill Rebane, who

will soon celebrate fifty years in the movie business, wrote himself

into the history of freaky films with his bloodsucking giant spiders.

68 Estonian Music - The Best Kept SecretRecently there has been talk of Estonian music as “the best kept se-

cret” in international music circles. Why Estonia has suddenly become

a magnet for music experts and music lovers? Helen Sildna, the or-

ganiser of Tallinn Music Week which will take place on 4-6 April 2013

might know the answer.

72 “Rock Summer 25“ Unites Generations

In 2013, Estonia celebrates it’s 95th birthday. But

there are many more memorable and emotionally charged events

designed to remind us of the re-establishment of our freedom, inde-

pendence and the blue-black-white national flag. One of them is the

first ever international rock festival held not only in Estonia but in all

of the former Soviet Union: the legendary “Rock Summer”.

74 Fine Dining in Tallinn

77 Estonia In Brief

78 Practical Information For Visitors

37 The New Generation Parcel Terminal Set To Conquer Europe

Cleveron, a company which develops and produces automated parcel

delivery systems, has its roots in the small provincial town of Viljan-

di. The company considers such giants as Amazon and Google to be

among its potential customers.

39 The Breakthrough of Quattromed: From University Basement To International Medical Company

The success story of Quattromed HTI, which is the largest private capi-

tal-based biotechnology company in Estonia, active for 16 years, reads

as a textbook case...

42 Estonian Scientist Designs Mutant Mice With Human Genes

Scientist Mario Plaas has spent the last couple of years modelling the

world’s first mouse with human genes, which would be infect-able with

the hepatitis virus C (HCV). As no effective medication exists to date,

pharmaceutical companies want to test future medications on the ro-

dents designed by Plaas.

44 Estonia Innovates in Higher Education

A unique master’s degree programme for creating and growing global

online businesses – DDVE – has been functioning at the University of

Tartu for two years. The curriculum combines theory with practice in an

interdisciplinary mix of entrepreneurship, technology, art and design.

48 Improving The Competitiveness Of The Nation

All nations seek to become more competitive and universities play a key

role in this effort. The School of Economics and Business Administration

of TUT has a new master’s level business programme in Finance and

Economic Analysis in pursuit of that goal.


Tallinn Music Week /4-6 April 2013/

The first weekend in April will turn the best music clubs, theatres, con-

cert halls, bars and cafes in Tallinn into a buzzing festival scene. Taking

place for the fifth time, the talent festival Tallinn Music Week presents

233 artistes from 20 countries, among them 165 performers from Es-

tonia. In five years, Tallinn Music Week has become the largest indoor

music festival of the northern Baltic region, and it brings audiences a

selection of our best music from all genres: indie folk, metal, pop, jazz

and classical.

See the line up and artists at www.tallinnmusicweek.ee


I WHERE TO GO THIS SEASON

JAzzKAAR /19- 28 April 2013/

For the 24th time, the Tallinn International Jazz Festival JAZZKAAR will

present the best sounds of today’s jazz to jazz-lovers. Artistes from 12

countries will give up to 60 concerts in Tallinn and nine other Estonian

towns at the Jazzkaar Festival from 19- 28 April. Legendary festival par-

ticipants are the US saxophonist-flutist and composer Charles Lloyd

(75) and the saxophonist and accordionist Michel Portal (77) who has

taken European jazz onto a new level. The young line-up includes stars

like Zara McFarlane, Nils Frahm, Hiromi, Dwele and many others.

Zara McFarlane

Jõhvi Ballet festival

May 10–12 2013

Moscow Classical Ballet10.05. Proko� ev “ROMEO AND JULIET”

11.05. Petrov /Kasatkina /Vassilyov “CREATION OF THE WORLD”

12.05CHILDREN’S GALA

presents

Come In. Interior Design as a Medium of Contem-porary Art in Germany UNTIL 02 .06 .2013

The exhibition examines interior design elements and everyday objects as fundamental items in our surrounding environment. The

viewer is shown a selection of German contemporary art that looks like design, but operates on the border between design and art. DOROTHEE GOLZ. COMMUNICATION MODEL (FROM RECEPTION ROOM) . 1997/2001. © VG BILD-KUNST, BONN

Afterlives of Gardens10 .05 .–08 .09 .2013

This international exhibition examines gardens and parks as places with nature designs by humans, and their functioning in culture and contemporary society.

GARDEN VISION FROM THE 16 TH CENTURY. FROM THE BOOK TEADUS JA TÄNAPÄEV . EESTI RAAMAT 1979

K U M U A R T M U S E U MWeizenbergi 34 / Valge 1, Tallinn. Phone +372 602 6000, www.kumu.eeOpen: Oct–Apr Wed 11am–8pm, Thu–Sun 11am–6pmMay–Sept Tue 11am–6pm, Wed 11am–8pm, Thu–Sun 11am–6pm

European Museum of the Year Award 2008

Charles Lloyd

Hiromi

Festival weekends with children's concerts and boat trips bring joy also

to younger audiences, as will club music evenings with Dwele, Ultima

Thule, Naturally 7 and Faye Houston. There will be a day of free

concerts in interesting venues of the Old Town where people can meet

beloved poets and musicians.

Jazzkaar brings the spring and offers everyone some joy!

www.jazzkaar.ee


LA BAYADÈRE

Ballet by Ludwig Minkus

World premiere on 23 January 1877 at Maria Theatre, St. Petersburg

Premiere at the Estonian National Opera on 16 May 2013

Libretto and original choreography: Marius Petipa and Sergei Hudekov

Choreographer and Stage Director of the new production: Thomas Edur

Conductors: Risto Joost and Mihhail Gerts

Designer: Peter Docherty (England)

“La Bayadère” is a story of eternal love, vengeance and justice. The bal-

let recounts the story of the impossible love between the temple dancer

Nikiya and the noble warrior Solor. In a moment of forgetfulness, Solor

becomes engaged to the rajah’s daughter Gamzatti and, in order to as-

sure the young man’s love for Gamzatti, the rajah decides to kill Nikiya…

“La Bayadère” is an important connection between the romantic and

classical eras of ballet. Although a major work in the Russian tradition,

the ballet remained unknown for a long time in the West. It was only

in 1961, in the course of a Kirov appearance at the Palais Garnier, that

a stunned Western public was able to discover its beauty.

The most notable numbers in the ballet include the incredibly demand-

ing men’s variation “The Golden Idol” and the scene of “The Kingdom

of the Shades”, which has become a symbol of ballet and is quite

often performed on its own.

www.opera.ee

Age Oks and Thomas Edur in the production of

“La Bayadère” at the English National Opera, in 1994.

Summer schools promoting cultural exchange and mutual understand-

ing, and creating networks essential for cooperation are rather popular

around the world. Though several European and US universities provide

logistics- and transport-themed summer courses, such an international

summer programme was not previously found in our area.

There are numerous reasons for launching a logistics summer school in

Estonia at this time, and particularly in partnership with the Logistics

and Transit Association (LTA). Alar Kolk, Pro-Rector of the Tallinn Uni-

versity of Technology (TUT) in charge of Innovation and International

Affairs, has mentioned that drawing foreign students to Estonia would

increase the research potential, and financial and human resources of

our universities, and the success of such involvement would increase the

general export success and economic growth of our country.

According to Kolk, about 3,000 international PhDs in Estonian universi-

ties, if distributed in the right way, would yield at least one thousand

internationally oriented new start-up companies and provide a foun-

dation for a boost in development to the existing ones. That, in turn,

would translate into a remarkable increase in GDP and national wealth

within the next decade. The logistics sector is a branch of the economy

with great potential for growth, accounting for 10 to 15 per cent of the

GDP. According to the Bank of Estonia, logistics services make up the

largest percentage of the export of Estonian services, accounting for 40

per cent of the total export capacity of Estonian services.

This June, TUT Logistics and the LTA are planning to launch a course in

the format of a summer programme focused on international logistics,

supply chain students and practitioners in logistics sector companies.

The objective of the programme is to teach logistics and supply chain

management and, at the same time, to introduce Estonia as a potential

partner country, emphasising our geographic advantages, with visits to

infrastructure providers and local enterprises.

Alar Kolk has suggested a potential formula for success for entrepre-

neurs: Estonian exporter + an Indian (or Chinese) MA programme stu-

dent of the TUT = best product development today + best sales repre-

sentative in India (or in China) in two years’ time. Expanding on this idea

and including people already employed in the companies, the formula

might be as follows: Estonian logistics entrepreneur + employee of an

international company attending the summer school of the TUT = best

relationships and higher awareness of our investment climate and the

advantages of our transport corridor.

The summer school programme, intended for anyone interested in pro-

fessional development or in expanding their horizons, is planned to run

for 10 days, of which intensive teaching would be offered for seven days.

In addition to the intensive training, it would be possible to provide inter-

esting non-academic activities prior to or after the intensive school days.

In organising and convening the study group, special attention would

be given to inviting students from Asia, the Americas, the European

Union and Russia, creating a solid mix and synergy of cultures, regions

and countries.

In the same way as the advantages of Estonia’s geographic location

have enabled us to evolve into a corridor of different trade routes and

transit trade, the experiences stemming from that very geographic loca-

tion enable us to introduce students to the specialities of different busi-

ness cultures and entrepreneurship.

Both the TUT and the LTA hope that, due to the summer school pro-

gramme, it will be possible to state in the future that we now literally

have a friend in each “harbour”.

For more information, see www.ttu.ee

Logistics-Themed Summer School in estonia

Kati Kõrbe / Department of Logistics and Transport,

Tallinn University of Technology (TUT Logistics)

Margot Ots / Estonian Logistics and Transit Association (LTA)


I EVENTS

Katoen Natie builds the biggest logistics centre in estonia

In July 2012, Katoen Natie, one of the world’s leading logistics

companies started the construction of the biggest, 65 000 m2

covered logistics centre in Estonia in the Port of Muuga with a

total investment of 30 million Euros.

The Director of Katoen Natie Estonia Mart Melles claims that the com-

pany chose the Port of Muuga for the location of the new logistics cen-

tre because the tax system in Estonia is straightforward and favourable

and the position of the Port of Tallinn is clear and understandable. “We

had previously purchased land in Muuga and some cargo was already

passing through Estonia – these circumstances lead to a decision to

build the logistics centre servicing the Baltic Sea region in Muuga. By

creating our own hub in Muuga, we hope to offer a reliable quality

service to our clients, bridging the East and the West and enabling cargo

flows to Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine,” explained Melles.

The logistics centre will be constructed in three phases – the first phase

consists of a 25 000 m2 warehouse equipped with a railway connection

and a 300 m2 administrative building. An additional 40 000 m2 ware-

house will be added in the second stage and the third stage envisages

the construction of 44 silos for the handling of plastic granules.

The first phase of the storage and distribution centre will be completed

in the first quarter of 2013. The new logistics centre will service the

transportation of various product groups in the Baltic Sea region, espe-

cially cocoa products, consumer goods, plastic goods, etc.

The constructed warehouse will be completely environmentally friendly

and safe, because no noise or smell is produced as the goods are pro-

cessed. The processing and storage of specific products is carried out in

different warehouses and special warehouse sections

After the project is completed, Katoen Natie will become the biggest

logistics service provider in the Port of Muuga that will create jobs for a

total of 60 people.

Katoen Natie is a Belgian company that was founded in 1854 and

presently has 159 logistics centres in 31 countries worldwide. The

company offers logistics solutions for a variety of

industries, such as

industrial commodi-

ties, automotive,

general cargo, etc.

The staff of Katoen

Natie amounts to

10,000 people.

Intel Capital bought into the Tartu company Fortumo

After 13 years of looking for an appropriate investment

opportunity in Estonia, the venture capital company belonging

to the technology giant Intel has found a company to invest

in – the Tartu-based mobile payment company Fortumo.

Intel Capital was already looking for investment opportunities in Esto-

nia as we entered the new century. Back then agreement was nearly

reached with the information portal Delfi.

“We were involved in negotiations with Intel Capital from 1999-2000

for a likely investment in Delfi. But then came the .com crash and Delfi

decided not to take on the investment,” explains Allan Martinson, a

venture capitalist who as a representative of Microlink was one of the

founders of Delfi. Hence Fortumo is the first Estonian company where

Intel Capital has invested.

“The cooperation with Intel Capital and Greycroft allows us to real-

ize our growth plans faster, and helps us to consider other strategic

partnerships and buying of other companies,” said Rain Rannu, Head

of Fortumo.

“The investment from the USA helps to create more jobs in Estonia.

Currently Fortumo employs 40 people. The plan is to grow to 60 people

by the end of the year. The head office and management will stay in

Tartu,” confirmed Rannu.

The new investors have a minority share in Fortumo and the mobile servic-

es company Mobi Solutions will still remain the main shareholder. In addi-

tion the key staff members of Fortumo are among the group of owners.

Fortumo’s service allows to make mobile payments for digital goods, with-

out the need for a bank card. Fortumo has mobile telecommunication op-

erator connections in 73 countries and with 300 mobile operators. Over

four billion people have access to mobile payments all over the world.

“Mobile payments have a huge potential and Fortumo has all precondi-

tions to profit quickly on the growing market of mobile operator-based

payments,” said Marcin Helka, Executive Director of the Central- and East

European and Near East and African Regions of Intel Capital.


NEWS I

The first doorknob designed by an Estonian will be manufactured by Abloy

In November 2012, the winners of the Abloy design contest were

announced in the Design and Architecture Gallery in Tallinn. First

prize was awarded to a doorknob designed by the young de-

signer Mihkel Mäll

Sixty-five works were submitted to the first design contest of doorknobs

held in Estonia, out of which the jury selected the winner: 1st prize was

awarded to Mihkel Mäll, a student of product design at the Estonian

Academy of Arts. The doorknob is timeless, classy and has two differ-

ent levels: looking at it from afar it seems faceted, but at close range it

is warm and useful. The doorknob suits well in different premises and

goes well with many different surfaces.

Mihkel Mäll, who is currently serving in the Estonian Defence Forces,

received inspiration while cooking. “I tested several kitchen knives, a

hunting knife and as many handles as possible in order to find the shape

which would be ergonomic and comfortable. I believed that the shape

of the doorknob should blend well with the shape of the human hand

and feel comfortable while opening a door. I tried to find a balance

between the technical side and the human side,” says Mäll, who sees a

future as a product designer.

Mihkel Mäll’s awarded doorknob will be added to Abloy’s selection un-

der the name “Abloy Tunne” (Abloy Feeling), and production and sales

starts in 2013. In Abloy’s 105 years of history, this is the first doorknob

model designed by an Estonian.

Estonian book designer wins international award

The internationally important and unique competition Best Book De-

sign From All Over The World has been organized in Lepizig since 1963

already. 575 books from 32 countries were nominated for the competi-

tion this year. The Bronze Medal went to Ivar Sakk’s book “Aa kuni Zz.

Tüpograafia ülevaatlik ajalugu” (From A to Z. The historical overview

of typography – ed.). This is the first important international recognition

of Estonian book design since Estonia regained independence.

Professor Ivar Sakk who heads the Graphic Design Department of the

Estonian Academy of Arts compiled the book on the history of typog-

raphy as part of his PhD at the same Academy. “Creating a book is

normally a collective undertaking. With this book on typography I was

the author of the text, the photographer, the editor, the publisher and

the designer. Colourful photos, glossy paper, golden cover titles and

fancy fonts did not have a place. The result is a ‘libra povera’, a ‘poor

book’ of sorts. It pleases me that others also understood my idea,”

comments Ivar Sakk.

Sakk’s works have been exhibited at various international exhibitions

like the Colorado Poster Biennale, Warsaw Poster Biennale, Brno Graph-

ic Design Biennale etc. Sakk’s posters can be found at the Victoria &

Albert Museum, the Warsaw Museum of Posters, The Arts Museum of

Toyama and elsewhere.

All entries to the book design competition can be seen at the Frankfurt

Book Fair in October.


I NEWS


Tallinn TV Tower listed among the great towers of the world

On 1 January 2013, Tallinn TV Tower became an official member of the

reputable World Federation of Great Towers. Height alone is not a suffi-

cient pre-condition for membership - the towers of the federation need

to be open to the general public. The highest tower in the federation is

Burj Kalifa with 828 metres. Tallinn TV Tower with its 314 metres ranks

19th among the 40 members of the federation. It is also the highest

building with public access in the northern Europe.

“In the name of our members, I am pleased to welcome the 40th mem-

ber of The World Federation of Great Towers – Tallinn TV Tower,” said

Daniel Thomas, Executive Director of WFGT. “The fact that the highest

building in Estonia has joined our ranks, demonstrates that the team of

Tallinn TV Tower has done an excellent job. All WFGT members have to

meet technical criteria set by WFGT and, in addition, offer a great ex-

perience to visitors by world standards, which all our 40 million visitors

have enjoyed.”

www.teletorn.ee

Downhill and snowboarding centre opens its doors in Kiviõli

In February 2013, an adventure tourism park established on an old

semi-coke hill opened its doors to visitors in Kiviõli after development

work spanning over a decade. With support from European funds, the

highest artificial mountain in the Baltic states was turned into a place

where skiing-, motorsport- and cycling tournaments can be held. The

reconstruction of the ash mountain resulted in the longest ski slopes in

Estonia – 700 metres – and a snowboarding park which meets all inter-

national standards. Future plans include opening a snowtubing track

and a fitness trail.

Janek Madar, board member of the Kiviõli Adventure Tourism Centre

explains that visitors will also be able to enjoy the park in the summer.

There are plans to create a track for mountain cars and a zip-line. There

will also be a track of rental ATVs and the health and fitness trail where

people can exercise.

Creating this unique sports and adventure tourism centre in the Baltic

Sea region will cost approximately 6 million euro. The centre predicts

that about 80,000 tourists from Estonia and abroad will visit the centre

each year.

www.tuhamagi.ee

The grand master and promoter of

Estonian gastronomy, the cuisinier

Dimitri Demjanov, has been on a

courageous mission, taking local

cooking from its black earthy roots

to the stars of the culinary world.

Dimitri Demjanov, who was born in St. Petersburg and

moved to Estonia with his parents in his first weeks of

life, could not predict at such an early age the course

that his life would take – it was only as he cooked grub

for his fellow students in the dormitory of the Tallinn

Marine College when it dawned on him that his destiny

was to offer the pleasures of fine dining to people.

First steps in the culinary world

His path to becoming a chef took some time. First

the young man found himself working as a waiter at

the restaurant Gloria. Next he became the barman at

the über-popular Mündi Bar. He received recognition

from various places and was awarded the title of best

waiter on many occasions in Estonia and the former

Soviet Union. In between, he managed to graduate

in industrial design from the Tallinn University of

Technology, and in the mid-1980s he was invited

to take up the position of Vice Director of the then

state-owned restaurant Gloria. But as the heart of a

restaurant is its kitchen, Demjanov decided to break

into the heart of Gloria and began to train himself to

become the best chef possible.

Demjanov has always been a man of many jobs and

activities. Since 1997 he has been a member of the

world’s oldest gastronomic society, La Chaîne des

Rôtisseurs. In addition to founding the Culinary Insti-

tute of Estonia in 2005, he has also led Bocuse d’Or

Estonia since then. Estonia has already participated

three times at the Bocuse d’Or, which has been called

the Olympic Games of chefs, or the Oscars of the

culinary world, and which is held in Lyon, the home

town of Paul Bocuse. Estonia won its best place to

date last January.

Text: Mari Kodres

Photos: Brand Manual, Johannes Arro,

Culinary Institute of Estonia

Taking Estonian Cuisine To New Heights

I LAND AND PEOPLE


Dimitri Demjanov and Heidi Pinnak, the chef who brought home

the highest place to date (14th) from Bocuse d’Or, met twenty

years ago when an ad was placed in newspapers advertising a

vacant chef’s position at Gloria. Demjanov, who was the Execu-

tive Director of the restaurant back then, talked with all of the

applicants, enquiring among other things about their favourite

foods. Many offered high-flying answers, but Heidi charmed

Demjanov with her “feet-firmly-on-the- ground” attitude. “Fried

potatoes and fried eggs was my answer! This bold statement

stood out and earned me the job,” recalls Heidi today.

However, as a dignified establishment, Gloria’s requirements

were more refined and during her work there Heidi became in-

creasingly interested in the gastronomic history of the world, its

principles and trends. “Dimitri’s maximalist attitude has inspired

everyone he has ever worked with. Although Estonia still does

not have its own Michelin-star restaurant, we have worked very

hard towards this goal,” explains Heidi.

In hindsight, all the knowledge gradually attained during the

years looks like preparation for Bocuse d’Or. In order to create

your own unique handwriting as a chef, it is necessary to learn

from the best in the field. Therefore, Heidi has also trained in the

kitchen of Pekka Terävä’s Olo restaurant in Finland and in the

homeland of haute cuisine – France. “In recent years, we have

seen the emergence of a symbiosis of the New Nordic Cuisine

and French Cuisine. Perhaps next we have to look to Asia,” she

suggests. This is supported by the fact that for only the second

time ever a chef outside Europe, from Japan, made it to the ped-

estal at Bocuse d’Or.

Heidi’s tribute to Babette’s Culinary Powers

Although Heidi has spent the last two years under the pressure

of the grand cooking championships, her attitude to cooking at

home is much more relaxed. “I am very happy that I am cur-

rently able to have a more egoistic approach to life: to take care

of the kitchen and guests of Egoist.” This warm attitude also

shone through Heidi’s competition work at Bocuse d’Or, which

carried the title “Babette’s Feast” and paid homage to the fic-

tional literary and film character Babette, a French war refugee

who at the end of the 19th century escapes to cold Jutland and

melts the ice in the most conservative hearts with her culinary

powers. The secrets of Babette’s cooking were not just refined

recipes, but her passion for food and personal touch, which Heidi

always tries to maintain in her work.

“We can talk about raw ingredients or specific technologies, but

good food should be something which everyone understands.

Food speaks of feelings, and pure tastes have the power and the

strength to influence people,” says Heidi.

But one cannot get around the topic of raw ingredients, as this is

regulated strictly in the rules of the competition. In this particular

competition, the two compulsory ingredients in the European

qualifications, which were preceded by eight months of intensive

training, were sole and the rare and expensive Bresse chicken.

Excellent handling of those ingredients brought the opportunity

to get into the finals, after the semi-finals in Brussels. In the

finals there were two new compulsory ingredients: Wellington

beef and halibut. Participation in the competition was not only

time consuming, but also expensive. “During the preparation

time, we used common sense and instead of the exclusive Wel-

lington beef filet we used local domestic beef cattle. The result

was very good,” says Heidi.

Heidi Pinnak – Estonia’s Representative in Bocuse d’Or 2013

Taking Estonian Cuisine To New Heights

13

The Estonian platter was created in cooperation with artists from the Estonian Academy of Arts

The set of ceremonial dishes that the Estonian

team headed by Chef Heidy Pinnak used to

present the final entries was created in coop-

eration with the artists from the Jewellery and

Blacksmithing Department of the Estonian

Academy of Arts. The set of elements was cre-

ated in six months. A complete, conceptual set

that complimented the food and excited all of

the senses of a professional observer had to be

created for a meat dish, and it was garnished

on a compulsory oval platter. The author of the

ceremonial dishes was Nils Hint.

Local Estonian ingredients

Heidi is by nature attracted to local ingredients. Beet-

root, Jerusalem artichoke, Spanish salsify and pumpkin

enthuse her with their taste qualities and exciting col-

ours. “I also like asparagus very much. It is clearly un-

derused in Estonia,” she notes. The restaurant Egoist

is also characterised by seasonal cuisine and of course

it is the Head Chef who is in charge.

At Bocuse d’Or, where garnishing and sauces are cho-

sen by the competitors themselves, Estonia has always

followed the principle of introducing local tastes. Es-

tonian vegetables, cranberries, apples, potatoes, quail

eggs, local cream and butter were transported to Lyon.

In addition, the sauce was spiced with Vana Tallinn

liqueur.

“The long and winding road that leads to your door,”

the Beatles sang. It has not been easy for Estonian

cuisine or its agents, but they have finally managed

to open the door and Estonians have been accepted

as heavyweights among global gastronomers. “The

meaning of such victories is always larger than just

the medal. I really hope that Estonia’s success gives

us self-confidence and provides momentum for young

chefs who are still learning the tricks of their trade.

This triumph showed that we are on the right track;

we have sweated and toiled for the right goal,” says

Dimitri Demjanov. He adds that success at the compe-

tition would have been impossible without a strong

team, which consisted of the coach, Ragnar Ómarsson

from Iceland, a two-time finalist at Bocuse d’Or, and

the commis, the young and talented Ari Gunnarsson,

who also comes from Iceland. In total, there were

eight people in the Estonian team.


I LAND AND PEOPLE

Coach Ragnar Ómarsson from Iceland, Heidi Pinnak, Estonia’s representative in Bocuse d’Or 2013, and cuisiner Dimitri Demjanov

Estonia has participated since 2008

Estonia was first invited to participate in the

world’s most famous cooking competition, Bocuse

d’Or, during the 2008-2009 cycle. The Estonian

representative, Vladislav Djachuk, came in

7th in the European qualifiers and 15th among

the world’s best in the finals. In the following

year, Dmitri Rooz from Estonia came in 14th

out of 20 in the European round.

The Estonian representative Heidi Pinnak

came in 11th at the European semi-finals held

in Brussels in the spring of 2012, being the only

woman who advanced to the finals, where she

came in 14th out of 24 finalists.

New directions

The Bocuse d’Or Estonian Academy has set the goal

of organising the next European qualification round in

2018 in Estonia. The first lady, Evelin Ilves, presented

the invitation to Raymonde, the wife of Paul Bocuse,

in Lyon. It would be the icing on the cake to organise

the 30th Anniversary of Bocuse d’Or in Estonia in the

same year that the Republic of Estonia celebrates its

100th birthday and Estonia holds the presidency of the

European Union. “Of course, this is a huge responsibil-

ity, but also a great chance to show what else we have

to offer in addition to medieval sites, our e-state and

pure nature,” explains Demjanov.

One has to continuously promote the image of good

food and the people who make it. Demjanov and Pin-

nak believe that children should be encouraged to be-

come interested in cooking and in cuisine from an early

age, which would have an effect on society as a whole.

Despite their busy lives, both have found the time to

visit Estonian schools to talk to pupils about food, and

also cook some simpler dishes with them, such as the

classic French tarte tatin. Within the framework of

the project “Back to School”, Demjanov has visited

several Estonian schools, and talked about becoming

a chef and about gastronomy in general. Mostly he

begins his presentations with questions, asking if they

who Gerd Kanter, Arvo Pärt, and Neeme Järvi are. Then

he asks about Heidi Pinnak. “Whereas kids answer the

first questions fast, knowing the best Estonian discus

thrower, and the world-renowned Estonian composer

and conductor, they have trouble with the last ques-

tion, and then I am able to explain to them that the

best chefs also have their own world championships

and a world-class chef is also an ambassador for

Estonian culture, just like the other famous names,”

explains Demjanov. Next he asks the students who see

themselves as chefs in the future to raise their hands.

As a rule, there are no hands raised; at most there

may be one or two. “The reputation of the profession

of chef is low, and this reflection of adult attitudes is

something I feel when I visit schools. Becoming a chef

is not prestigious, and kids tend to dream about be-

coming lawyers or doctors,” Demjanov explains. By the

way, the Paul Bocuse Institute, the springboard for top

chefs, also has training programmes for school cooks.


The first lady, Evelin Ilves, presented the invitation of the Bocuse d’Or Estonian Academy to Raymonde,

the wife of Paul Bocuse, in Lyon

Dimitri Demjanov: For a small country, cuisine is an important component of cultural diplomacyWhat does participation in Bocuse d’Or mean to Estonia?

This competition, which takes place every two

years, is an important trend setter in world gas-

tronomy. Willingness to participate is not enough;

only countries that are already successful in

gastronomy or that show a lot of potential are

invited to participate. When we received the invita-

tion, it was also proof that we had made the right

decisions in our training of chefs, but of course

this was only a minor achievement compared to

the challenges that lay ahead. An invitation to

participate is a great honour and it means a lot to

a small country that is still unknown in the world

of gastronomy. Around every chef, there is a whole

team working, and our success will create motiva-

tion in other chefs to aspire further. This example

should reach all cooking schools. Only in this

way can we make a qualitative jump and create

something new and extraordinary ourselves. It’s

not only the chef’s personal ambitions at stake in

the competition; it’s the competing country’s good

name and reputation as a well-known gastronomy

destination that hang in the balance. Participation

in Bocuse d’Or takes vigorous training and specific

skills that require a lot of enthusiasm, attention

to detail, commitment, and collaboration between

many individuals and organizations.

In addition to being a source of inspiration for the

next generation of chefs, the international suc-

cess of Estonian cuisine influences us all; it affects

anyone who likes to eat well. When we value our

chefs, it makes them more eager to introduce and

develop Estonian cuisine locally and globally, gain-

ing admiration from tourists and locals alike.

Back to the classics

But where is the dignified lady Gloria in her 76th year

of life heading with regard to world food trends? “I

want to say that she keeps moving. Just simply and

elegantly,” says Demjanov, who claims that it has

always been the trademark of Gloria and Egoist to of-

fer good and acclaimed international cuisine without

making any compromises. Demjanov points to the

home restaurant of Paul Bocuse, where innovation

means maintaining the status quo. “When you dine

there, you eat history,” he claims. Skilfully combining

different cuisines may produce a powerful effect if

done by a pro, but surprises and experimentation per

se do not always mean quality. With the best chefs

in the world, for example Joël Robuchon, who has

collected 28 Michelin stars with his restaurants, it

tends to be the rule that experimentation is done at

an early age but as one matures one returns to the

classics. “Then they return to the basics of the art

of cooking: how to boil an egg, how to make great

mashed potatoes, and how to cook the best sauce,”

explains Demjanov.

Often people draw a parallel between cooking and

art: like an artist, chefs too are always suffering the

artistic pains of creation, thinking that someone else

is doing a better job, being more successful, market-

ing themselves better. Yet Demjanov compares the

job of the chef more with that of a handicraftsman

than an artist. “I think cooking is like beautiful na-

tional handicrafts, like a pretty piece of knitting,” he

claims. Whereas an artist places primary importance

on the idea, handicraftsmen have less room to play

with, fewer chances to make mistakes in the imple-

mentation. Yet Demjanov does not consider himself

to be a traditionalist.


I LAND AND PEOPLE

Dimitri Demjanovis the grand old man of Estonian restaurant

culture and the promoter and initiator of the prin-

ciples of New Nordic Cuisine in Estonia. He is the

founder of the Culinary Institute of Estonia and

manages two restaurants in Tallinn: Gloria, the

oldest continuously operated restaurant in Estonia,

which celebrated its 75th anniversary last year,

and Egoist, which focuses on French haute cuisine.

Demjanov has shaken hands and served dinner

to Pope John Paul II, Charles, Prince of Wales and

many other distinguished guests who have visited

Estonia over the years.

In addition to the desire to achieve a place in

world gastronomy for a country on the periph-

ery of Europe, one additional personal memory

connects Demjanov to Bocuse d’Or. During his

studies in various countries, the present member

of the French Academy of Culinary Arts, Dimitri

Demjanov, landed in the kitchen of Paul Bocuse

himself, where he sliced and diced onions starting

at six o’clock in the morning. “I started by learning

from the best,” he recollects with a smile. Later he

advanced his skills in Michelin star restaurants in

London, Strasbourg and Stockholm, as well as in

the academy of the personal cook to Elizabeth II,

Anton Mosimann.

Tallinn – the flagship of Estonian gastronomy

When asked to say a few words about the quality of

food on a geographical basis, Demjanov praises not

Estonia as a whole, but Tallinn in particular. There has

been a real leap in quality in the food landscape in Tal-

linn within the last few years. “I admit that I thought

it would take much longer,” says Demjanov, and

mentions the quality family restaurants which have

mushroomed in Estonia within a short period of time,

the virtuosos of Nordic cuisine, specialists of French

cooking and different ethnic cuisines. Demjanov recalls

a recent meeting with a well-known Finnish tourism

expert who remembered the 1990s in Tallinn, light-

years away today, when even the good restaurants

served Uncle Ben’s sauces. “It was just recently that

all the main courses looked the same and the garnish-

ing always included potatoes, tomatoes and a slice of

cucumber. Those days are definitely over in Tallinn, but

there is plenty of room for development outside the

capital,” he says. This is where he returns to thinking

aloud about the profession of a chef and to analysing

the current state of affairs.

Demjanov is being diplomatic when he says that

the individual development and ambitions of Esto-

nian chefs are far ahead of official training. The big

drawback is a narrow view of the world, a lack of

knowledge about gastronomic history and how tastes

are created. “In addition there is a lack of disciplinary

subjects in schools on the restaurant business as busi-

ness. But that goes hand in hand with cooking know-

how,” he claims. As a positive change, Demjanov

notes that on the initiative of chefs themselves many

restaurants have been established in Estonia where

the chefs are the owners. “Such direct responsibility

is definitely more difficult, but it adds motivation. The

feedback from customers then means something else

than it does when you are just a paid employee,” he

believes.

Do what you are good at

When asked what advice he would give chefs just

starting out in their careers, Demjanov thinks a little

and then says: “do not try to jump over your own

shadow!” In other words, one has to find one’s own

niche and create one’s own philosophy as a chef. “It

is not possible to know it all at once, you cannot be a

top chef simultaneously in Italian, Indian and French

cuisine. You have to be sure about your choice and

dedicate yourself to it; only then can you be success-

ful,” he adds.

In parallel with better educational opportunities for

chefs, the food related know-how of the general pub-

lic has increased. Demjanov sees a slight contradiction

here: the emphasis in global cuisine is currently on the

presentation of food, on how it looks, but intelligent

eaters value the purity of tastes more and more.

Therefore, one should always remember that the devil

is in the details, and that genius involves simplicity.

“Besides the top culinary trends, one should not

forget how to bake a truly good black bread or how

to fry home-made pancakes,” says Demjanov. Those

simple truths are part of the reason why this man who

juggles Estonian foods at cosmic heights has been

selected as one of the cultural heritage ambassadors

for Estonia.

Paul Bocuse together with the present member of the French Academy of Culinary Arts, Dimitri Demjanov

Restaurant Gloria, founded in 1937 as the night pub “Dancing Paris”, has shared its hospitality for more than 75 years



It all began by accidentWhen the Ford Motor Company “invented”

(together with General Electric) shared services

in Europe in the early 1980s, it was more by

accident than strategy. In Ford’s Finnish sub-

sidiary, a large group of finance people left the

company at the same time. Hiring a group of

new finance people that fast was not possible,

so Ford was faced with practical problems in

keeping up operations support, for example

closing the books on time. A task force was set

up, consisting of several Swedish finance peo-

ple (Sweden being the nearest geographic lo-

cation with available resources), supported by

some other European employees. In the end,

the task force cleared the situation and it was

found that it was possible to perform a major

part of the finance activities for Finland from

another location (in this case Sweden). Since

Ford was reluctant to hire a whole new fi-

nance department, several activities were kept

permanently in Sweden. Ford had success-

fully solved the practical resource issues and

reduced both future risk and cost. Over time,

this “accidental solution” was found to work

well and was implemented for other countries

as well. About 20 years later, Ford moved the

first finance process on a global basis to India.

From SSO to GBSThe development in shared services from an

“accident” to the most successful service

delivery model of all time is remarkable. The

Shared Service Organisation (SSO) model has

been purposely utilised for over 20 years and

has hence developed significantly faster than

operating models in other areas, e.g. produc-

tion. SSO copies, in many ways, the produc-

tion logic of concentrating similar products/

services into one “production location”. In

finance today, almost all companies utilise the

SSO model, and over half of the volume within

the companies is handled through the SSO.

The 2008/2009 economic crisis has left many

organisations wondering what it is they need

to do to prepare for the next downturn, as well

as the next upturn. All research seems to sug-

gest that volatility in markets is increasing. Re-

search from The Hackett Group suggests that

while revenues (in Europe) dropped 19.7% in

Q3 2009 vs. Q3 2008, the ability of compa-

nies to adjust their G&A costs (general and

administrative costs, encompassing finance, IT,

HR, procurement and corporate services) was

only 3.1%. Organisations are therefore look-

ing for ways to make their back offices more

flexible in order to respond to the next wave of

change requirements.

In G&A (general and administrative) functions,

the finance function has had a forerunner

role over the past 20 years in performance

improvements. This has lead to a significant

cost gap of approximately 50% between a

world-class company and a median company.

This gap between very good performance lev-

els and median performance levels is higher in

finance than in any other area. At the same

time, the performance improvement oppor-

tunity in finance is larger than in most other

areas. When looking at this on a process-by-

process level, it is striking that in accounts pay-

able, for example, the gap between the best

and the worst is up to eight times the cost.

The process improvement opportunity is still

significant and the average automation levels

are hovering around 20-40% for the median

company, while the best companies (world-

class) manage double that.

Recent years’ trends in shared services have

been based on the fact that there is currently

no alternative to shared services as a delivery

model. Hence, the scope has become both

deeper and broader. Shared services is now

utilised across all of G&A and is becoming

multi-functional, which makes it possible to

seriously strive for the “end-to-end process”

- previously just “consulting talk” but now

a real opportunity. In finance, the trend is to

“move up the value chain” and handle more

“value-adding” activities. Based on these

Text: Tom Bangemann

Senior Vice President Business Transformation

The Hackett Group

The World of Shared Services

I STATE AND SOCIETY

Tom Bangemann at the Estonia’s Friends International Meeting in 2012


Text: Tom Bangemann

Senior Vice President Business Transformation

The Hackett Group

developments, SSO has become more mature

in scope and nature and we now refer to SSO

as GBS (Global Business Services).

Shared services centres as fast track development platformsIn finance, the original shared services was

thought to be a “transaction factory” ap-

proach, focusing on transactional processes

only, i.e. sub-ledgers (AP and AR) and parts

of the general ledger. In the more mature

GBS world, the scope has increased radically

to include all accounting, but also decision

support processes, i.e. planning processes and

parts of treasury. As a result, the requirements

on centres, work content and people work-

ing there have changed dramatically. Shared

service centres are today, without doubt, “fast

track development platforms”. Companies

increasingly realise that the centres house

some of their best talent and use centres as

enablers rather than factories. The boundaries

between organisational units have diminished

so that the career path for a finance person in

a GBS environment is today often better than

being in the business unit.

As part of the consolidation of activities into

fewer production locations, there is always a

component of location competition. Since cost

is a major driver, most activities have moved

from Western Europe and North America to

Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and select Asian

locations. Companies with headquarters in

Europe somewhat prefer CEE locations over

Asian locations, although global competition

is tight. The preferred locations in Europe used

to be the V4 countries (Poland, the Czech Re-

public, Slovakia and Hungary), but parts of the

Balkans and all of the Baltics are catching up.

Estonia as one of the hottest location options availableThe Baltics are doing very well compared to

the size of the labour markets and availabil-

ity of staff. Estonia has been very successful

in attracting shared service work in recent

years, despite being 10-20% higher in cost

(for a typical size and skill mix) compared to

the other Baltic countries. In the eyes of the

companies making location decisions, Esto-

nian cost levels are still on a competitive level

within Europe, and only slightly higher than

Asian locations.

More importantly, while cost is the number

one criteria, it is not the only one. Effective-

ness is increasingly becoming more and more

important, and Estonia scores well on this

scale. Estonia is the leading location in basi-

cally all areas of the e-economy, from the num-

ber of wireless hotspots to e-government. This

makes extremely effective processes and high

automation levels possible in all areas of the

shared service business, from setting up an en-

tity to communicating with suppliers, custom-

ers and employees. The advanced technology

environment often outweighs direct cost crite-

ria in company decision making, as the overall

benefits are assumed to be larger and overall

the environment is very cost-efficient.

The size of the Estonian labour market poses

restrictions on how many centres can be ac-

commodated and how large they can be,

but the diversity of the labour force skill sets

fits the requirements of the current market

very well. Estonia has a well-educated and

multilingual young labour force that shared

services operations typically target. Estonians

are mobile, and the distances are short, so

they pose few problems. Strategically, the lo-

cation within the EU but with a potential to

enlarge scope towards Russia is attractive to

many companies, even if the current shared

services scope does not yet include Russia. The

multi-functional trends in shared services lead

to more comprehensive content and skill re-

quirements, and often several smaller groups

with more variable task profiles than in a very

traditional SSC. Estonians respond very well to

flexibility requirements and are eager to learn

and advance. Especially in cases of smaller and

medium centres with broad scope, including

both transactional and decision support activi-

ties, Estonia has become one of the hottest lo-

cation options available.

With a total population of 1.3 million and a GDP of 16 bn EUR,

Estonia is miniscule in the global community of 7 bn, with a GDP

of 70 tr EUR. Nevertheless, one should not be deceived by the

tiny market size, as a small economy is in a constant fight for sur-

vival. Just as with small fish the key to survival lies in the ability

to swim faster, the same applies for small economies. Estonia has

put notable effort into developing a beneficial business environ-

ment and the outcome of these endeavours is visible in numer-

ous facts and global indices

Country with a great business environmentEstonia ranks #21 globally in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Busi-

ness Index thanks to its business friendly policy-making and low levels

of red tape, and #3 in terms of countries with small populations. More

importantly, within this index it ranks as the seventh best global location

for “trading across borders”.

Country with a technologically advanced business platform Estonia benefits from a modern business and technological infrastruc-

ture. This is supported by a simple, stable tax system: there is no tax on

retained profits, no withholding tax on interest or dividends, and there

are numerous double taxation treaties, facilitating efficient flows and

long-term planning.

Estonia ranks among the most wired and technologically-advanced

countries in the world, and is the host of NATO’s Cyber Defence Centre

of Excellence. With a high Internet penetration rate and widespread e-

commerce and e-government services, Estonia has become a model for

free Internet access as a development engine. For instance, registering

a company has never been easier: in Estonia it can be executed online

within 10 minutes!

Emerging Nordic countryEstonia benefits from its strategic location at the intersection of the

European, Nordic and Russian markets, providing a unique set of trade,

language and cultural linkages. Despite its comparatively small size, it is

one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, with GDP growth of

7.6% in 2011 and 3.2% in 2012, in contrast to the respective EU

27 growth indicators of 1.5% and -0.3%.

What Does Estonia Offer for Doing Business in the Financial Sector?

20 LIFe IN eSToNIA I 2013 SPRING

I STATE AND SOCIETY

FinanceEstonia International Forum 2013 will be hosted from June 6th to 7th in Tallinn, Estonia. It gathers inter-

national senior financial decision makers for a dialogue on efficiency

increase opportunities in Fund Administration, Private Banking, Treas-

ury and Shared Services. Beyond these topics, the event encompasses

live discussions on Capital Market development in a small economy like

Estonia.

FinanceEstonia International Forum elaborates on Estonian financial en-

vironment as local companies introduce their best practices and guests

get a chance to meet with top-level business and political executives.

Aside of the business exposure, all participants get acquainted with

magnificent Tallinn and Estonia.

The audience of the forum consists of senior level decision makers, who

1) consider outsourcing financial functions or fund administration 2) are

making investment or wealth management decisions (including private

equity) 3) are interested in understanding the opportunities in Estonia.

The Forum provides a chance to meet key players in the region, as alto-

gether nearly 300 participants will gather in Tallinn.

The event is organised by FinanceEstonia, which is a public-private

cluster initiative with the aim of promoting Estonian financial services

exports and continuously enhancing the development of local capital

markets. The key activities of FinanceEstonia aim at increasing Estonia’s

competitiveness while establishing it as a vibrant and innovative location

for financial services.

Additional information about the forum can be found at

www.financeestonia.eu

FinanceEstonia is public-private cluster initiative. It's activities are financed by membership fees

and European Regional Development Fund.

Photos: Age Dupikov

Estonia was among a group of ten countries incorporated into the Eu-

ropean Union on 1 May 2004 and adopted the Euro in January 2011. It

has the lowest level of sovereign debt to GDP in the EU, at 6.6%

versus an 83.4% average (Q1 2012), has a government committed to

balanced budgets, and has an AA- credit rating.

Stable and sustainable financial sector Besides its beneficial business setting, Estonia offers a stable and sus-

tainable financial industry environment with potential, which is already

being utilised. The country’s banking sector is well consolidated, as de-

picted in its Herfindahl Index of 0.29, contrasted with 0.1 for the EU 27.

The capital buffer already exceeded that of the EU 27 prior to the crises,

where 9.1% in Estonia was contrasted with 5.1% for the EU 27 (2008).

In 2010 the same indicator was 13.6% for Estonia versus 7.0% for the

EU 27. Tallinn as an aspiring financial centre is continuously climbing in

the Global Financial Centre’s Index, with its latest ranking of 66 in 2012

versus 74 in 2010.

The industry’s potential is reflected in numerous examples like Statoil

Fuel & Retail’s Finance Centre (Tallinn) and SEB Eastern European fund

management (Tallinn).


FinanceEstonia is a public-private cluster initiative with the aim of

promoting Estonian financial services exports and continuously en-

hancing the development of local capital markets. FinanceEstonia

aims to build awareness of Estonian advantages in four priority

niches: Corporate Treasury & Shared Service Centres, Financial

Technology, Fund Services, and International Private Banking.

FinanceEstonia supports the establishment of new companies in

Estonia, creating new jobs, and increasing capital availability, espe-

cially in small and medium-size companies. Our ambition is to be

one of the cornerstones of the Estonian financial sector’s successful

development. Through such co-operation, we support establishing

Estonia as a vibrant and innovative location for financial services.

Mae Hansen, CEO of FinanceEstonia

Statoil Fuel & Retail Enjoys Having Estonia as a Location for its Finance Centre

The road transport fuel retailer Statoil Fuel & Retail established

its finance centre, which operates as an internal bank for the

group, in Tallinn on 1 October 2010. Veiko Haavapuu, Director

of Statoil Fuel & Retail Finance Centre, says that Estonia continu-

ously offers many advantages as a location for finance centre.

“The finance centre acts as a competence centre within the group com-

panies, developing and performing such financial services as treasury

services, cash management services, centralised treasury accounting

and group financing services,” describes Veiko Haavapuu the daily work

of Statoil Fuel & Retail Finance Centre.

In 2010, when Statoil Fuel & Retail was established as a separate legal

entity within the Statoil ASA Corporation, the decision to create a fi-

nance centre for the newly established company was taken. All eight

markets where Statoil Fuel & Retail operates—the Scandinavian coun-

tries, the Baltic states, Poland and Russia—were evaluated in selecting

the location for the finance centre. Estonia scored well on important

location attractiveness factors, such as a well-developed financial and IT

infrastructure, a favourable regulatory and tax regime, and the introduc-

tion of the Euro on 1 January 2011.

“All these factors are still present in Estonia. Therefore, we are pleased

to have our finance centre in Estonia,” adds Haavapuu.

What is your vision for making Estonia more attractive as a finance centre?

Veiko Haavapuu: “We should consider our opportunities in

detail and consider which niche areas can be realised quickly.

We should also use our existing success stories, as they make

it much easier to attract new companies. These could be call-

centres, support units for accounting etc. The names of com-

panies operating these create trust and those success stories

should be marketed actively. It would probably be difficult to

bring the units of some UK company to Estonia, but it is to-

tally realistic to attract the support functions of Scandinavian

enterprises. The potential companies should be mapped one

by one, personal offers should be made and international

specialists should be included in this process. “


I STATE AND SOCIETY

What is what:

Statoil Fuel & Retail ASStatoil Fuel & Retail is a leading Scandinavian road

transport fuel retailer, with over 100 years of op-

erations in the region. Statoil Fuel & Retail has a

broad retail network across Scandinavia, Poland,

the Baltics and Russia, with approximately 2,300

full-service (fuel and convenience) or automated

(fuel only) stations that serve one million customers

at its stations every day.

Statoil Fuel & Retail’s other products include station-

ary energy, marine fuel, aviation fuel, lubricants and

chemicals. In Europe, Statoil Fuel & Retail owns and

operates 12 key terminals and 38 depots in eight

countries, and it operates approximately 400 road

tankers. It also delivers aviation fuel at 85 airports in

ten countries and produces and sells 750 different

lubricant products.

Including employees at Statoil-branded franchise

stations, about 18,500 people work at Statoil Fuel

& Retail’s retail sites across Europe, in its corporate

headquarters, its eight regional headquarters, its

terminals and its depots.

Statoil ASA Statoil is an international energy company with op-

erations in 35 countries and is the former moth-

er company of Statoil Fuel & Retail. Building on

40 years of experience from oil and gas produc-

tion on the Norwegian continental shelf, Statoil is

committed to accommodating the world’s energy

needs in a responsible manner, applying technology

and creating innovative business solutions. Statoil is

headquartered in Norway, with approx. 21,000 em-

ployees worldwide, and is listed on the New York

and Oslo stock exchanges.

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc On 19 June 2012, Statoil ASA completed the sale

of its 54 per cent holding in the company, and Sta-

toil Fuel & Retail became part of the Alimentation

Couche-Tard Inc. (TSX: ATD.A and ATD.B) group

of companies. The Statoil Fuel & Retail share was

formally de-listed from the stock exchange in Oslo

following the close of business on 12 July 2012. As

a result of this transaction, Statoil Fuel & Retail has

become part of a network of more than 8,100 sta-

tions and 70,000 passionate retailers.

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. is the leader in the

Canadian convenience store industry. In North

America, Couche-Tard is the largest independent

convenience store operator (whether integrated

with a petroleum corporation or not) in terms of the

number of company-operated stores. In Europe,

Couche-Tard is a leader in convenience store and

road transportation fuel in Scandinavian countries

and in the Baltic states, and it has a growing pres-

ence in Poland.

In addition, under licensing agreements, about

4,100 stores are operated under the Circle K banner

in nine other countries (China, Guam, Hong Kong,

Indonesia, Japan, Macau, Mexico, Vietnam and the

United Arab Emirates).

As a result of establishing the new finance centre in Estonia, Statoil Fuel

& Retail made an investment of 270 million EUR into its local subsidiary,

Statoil Fuel & Retail Eesti AS. The finance centre finances the activities

of the Statoil Fuel & Retail AS group operations in its retail markets in

Scandinavia, the Baltics, Russia and Poland.

The availability of skilled and experienced employees is also one of

the key factors when establishing a new organisation. According to

Haavapuu, the recruitment of finance specialists was carried out accord-

ing to the initial plan and was successful.

“Statoil Fuel & Retail has a good reputation as an employer; therefore,

we had an advantage to attract good finance professionals We saw

that there were people who had worked for various banks and consult-

ing firms and were experienced in the field of banking and financial

markets in Estonia. We had a thorough personnel selection process,

and we knew exactly what personal qualities and professional skills we

were looking for,” explains Haavapuu, adding that the core team was

recruited within six months.

Today the finance centre employs nine people who are based in Tallinn.

“We have a strong team and we have achieved good results. We are an

equal partner to the group´s head office team in Oslo, Norway, confirm-

ing that the decision in 2010 was the right one,” says Haavapuu.

23 SPRING 2013 I LIFe IN eSToNIA

Why did ERGO merge in the Baltics?The owner of ERGO sees Estonia, Latvia and

Lithuania as a unified geographical and com-

mercial unit. Separately, we are three relatively

small countries and three relatively small mar-

kets; together, however, we represent a bigger

market, with approximately six million people

(the population of Austria). Unification simpli-

fies management, reporting and communica-

tion with the owner.

Capital optimisation, which becomes possible

though the merger, is a very important factor

for stakeholders. Another very important rea-

son is that the merger provides clear advantag-

es for implementation of Solvency II in the near

future. Implementing Solvency II in one com-

pany instead of three decreases the amount of

reporting to financial supervision authorities,

which in turn saves time and money.

The merger of insurers is a clearly visible

trend in the insurance market. The four main

competitors of ERGO in the non-life insurance

market conduct business by the same model:

one risk carrier with two branches.

The merger definitely puts us in a better posi-

tion not only in the Baltic states, but in the

whole ERGO group. Synergy can be found

in integrated processes, in the exchange of

knowledge and in operating costs. Unified

business has better growth potential in high

competition markets.

Clients should expect new initiatives in ser-

vice, and for employees these changes open

up opportunities to develop in a multicultural

team, exchange good practice, enhance their

competence and participate in international

projects in all the Baltic states. For the com-

pany itself, this step helps manage the busi-

ness even more effectively, optimise capital

allocation and capital employment, increase

competitiveness in the market, and invest in

further positive and sustained development.

ERGO Brings Its Baltic Head Office To Estonia

This year ERGO decided to merge all non-life insurance companies in the Baltics into one European company and establish the head office in Estonia. Life in Estonia asked Dr. Kęstutis Bagdonavičius, Chairman of the Management Board of the ERGO Insurance Group in the Baltic states, what the reasons for such a decision were

In summary, we see these advantages in the merger:Long-term advantages for regional

steering in the Baltic states:

• The major argument for regional steering

is achievement of the economy of scale

and thus optimisation of costs and more

attractive pricing for customers. At the

same time, this cost optimisation does not

harm the high quality of service, which is a

priority.

• The opportunity to develop and introduce

insurance solutions for clients in the region,

which include some risks for the whole ter-

ritory, but makes the winning of pan-Baltic

tenders more likely.

• The opportunity for employees to broaden

their experience and grow profession-

ally through engagement in cross-border

assignments.

• Increased power of market position when

negotiating with partners (when buying re-

insurance, assistance, goods & services).

• ERGO Baltic positions itself within the

shareholder´s portfolio and thus the

shareholder´s attitude towards ERGO Baltic

is stronger.

• Savings and risk capital optimisation within

Solvency II and overall less reporting (via le-

gal merger)


I ECONOMY AND BUSINESS

ERGO in Estonia Three companies operate under the

name ERGO in Estonia: the non-life insur-

ance company ERGO Insurance SE, the

life insurance company ERGO Life Insur-

ance SE Eesti filiaal and the 2nd and the

3rd pillar pension funds manager ERGO

Funds AS.

ERGO has an extensive sales network in

Estonia, with 43 branches, and offers the

broadest range of life, pension and prop-

erty insurance. ERGO serves 140,000

clients and manages more than 200,000

contracts in Estonia. ERGO was the sec-

ond largest company of its kind in non-

life insurance in 2012, with an 18.3%

market share, in life insurance it has a

7% market share, and in second pillar

pension funds it has a 4% market share.

ERGO Insurance Group in the Baltic statesERGO is among the leading insurance

groups in the Baltic states and is the only

one to offer a complete range of cover-

age, including property insurance and

accident insurance, along with life, pen-

sion and health insurance. Premiums of

ERGO Baltic totaled EUR 150.2 million in

2012. Last year, customers in the Baltic

countries were paid more than EUR 96.3

million in insurance claims. ERGO Insur-

ance Group is also present in Belarus, of-

fering services in the non-life sector. Over

550,000 customers in the Baltic states

trust the services, know-how and finan-

cial stability of ERGO Group.

ERGO companies operating in the Baltic

countries are part of the international

ERGO Group – one of the largest insur-

ance corporations in Europe. Worldwide,

the Group is represented in over 30 coun-

tries, concentrating on Europe and Asia.

ERGO is part of Munich Re, one of

the leading re-insurers and risk carriers

worldwide.

Why SE, when there are different types of companies?A European company (Societas Europaea - SE)

is a type of company created through the Stat-

ute for a European Company, which is regis-

tered in one member state of the European

Union, and through local offices can easily op-

erate in other member states. Then the owner

can change the location of the head office or

make other changes much more easily.

Why establish the head office in Estonia? Mainly due to the attractive investment frame-

work, e.g. taxation: in Estonia only profit is

subject to taxation. If the profit is reinvested

in the company, then it is tax exempt. The tax

rate in Latvia and Lithuania is 15%.

Since the merger, the Estonian head office has

been responsible for capital (required capital)

and management (e.g. requirements for man-

agers, internal audits, risk management, an in-

ternal control system and conformity checks),

and is supervised by the Estonian Financial Su-

pervision Authority.

What is the biggest challenge in dealing with three different cultures? There are more opportunities than challenges.

We had several workshops on cultural diver-

sity. Everybody had a chance to share their

thoughts and see us as others do.

There were some key ideas that most Latvians

and Lithuanians agreed on: Estonians always

ask “why?”, while Lithuanians are used to a

more German style: their leaders are well in-

formed and know exactly why without any

doubt. Estonians are sceptical about almost

every change, but if they are “in” they do not

care if it is day or night; they will contribute

more than 100%.

A recent internal communication survey in

the Baltic states showed that we even prefer

to receive information differently: Estonians

like news on the Intranet and they want more

“face to face” meetings, Lithuanians prefer to

receive information via e-mail, and Latvians

love Intranet above all, and then e-mails.

Estonians like everything that is short and sim-

ple, while Lithuanians and Latvians need more

emotion in texts. We see value in our diversity.

Personally, I very much enjoy the fact that a lot

of employees from Estonia in our organisation

are taking successful regional responsibility

within important functions.

At the end of 2012 the ERGO brand was recognised as the most loved insurance brand in the Baltic states. You must be proud.We can be grateful that residents in the Baltics

have ranked ERGO as the most loved insurer,

choosing our services among many other al-

ternatives. This recognition is proof that ERGO

in the Baltic states stands behind sustainable

values that are appreciated by our customers.

We made the Baltic TOP list of the most loved

brands this year for the first time, but we have

made the Latvian TOP list of the most loved

brands since 2004.

We are glad not only that clients love our

brand but that recent customer satisfaction

surveys showed that the main reason for pre-

ferring ERGO is our pleasant service.

ERGO in Estonia looks to contribute to making society a safer and more caring

place and sees it vital to support the promotion of good health, safety and

security within society, sports and culture.


“Even if you happen to be an expert - one in a million - there are

still 4,500 people in India who can do the same job as you ten

times cheaper,” said Glen Koskela, Chief Technology Officer of

Fujitsu Nordic, last autumn in his presentation to the couple of

hundred staff members of the Estonian branch of the company.

“A mere one per cent of Chinese people with the highest IQs ac-

complish ten times more than the entire population of Estonia,”

he continued.

With these two provocative examples, Koskela made it obvious that the

workers of the Estonian branch find themselves in great international

competition. But it seems that Estonians are managing very well, as

sales revenue is growing steadily at 20% a year. What other reason

could there be for the Japanese technology giant to establish its region-

al service centre in Tallinn? According to Ülle Kivirähk, Head of Sales

of Fujitsu Estonia, the final result of the current financial year will be 9.5

million Euros in revenue. “Even during the deepest time of crisis, we

continued to grow and expand, as 65% of our services are exported,”

she says proudly.

“I used to think that everything would not happen so fast [in Estonia]

but it turns out that, indeed, it does,” says Juhani Kuusinen, Head of

IT User Support Services of Fujitsu Estonia. Kuusinen, himself a Finn, is

the one directly responsible for the fact that the IT management depart-

ment, which moved from Finland to Estonia five years ago, is grow-

ing so rapidly. During this time, a team of five has grown into a team

of 150, and the clientele of the company ranges from Scandinavian

companies and public bodies to international corporations residing in

Singapore and New York. The biggest international clients cannot be

mentioned as this is a business secret. However it is no secret that the

customers of Fujitsu Services include two of the largest Finnish retail

chains: Prisma and Stockmann.

Fujitsu Service Desk offers full IT management services to its customers,

including everything from solving simple problems of e-mail exchange

to thorough network maintenance services. “Our policy is that a prob-

lem of a customer must be solved during one telephone conversation,”

states Kuusinen. Service Desk also solves many problems occurring on

different platforms; for example, there are dozens of different phones

Five years ago Fujitsu moved its IT managementdepartment from Finland to Estonia. As the IT service centre has proven successful, Fujitsu hasdecided to also open its financial services centre in Estonia.

Fujitsu Manages Scandinavian IT From Estonia And Is Planning To Establish A Financial Services Centre



on the staff desks, so that they can pick up the appropriate phone for

the current customer and find the right solution step by step. “There

are so many different gadgets and appliances today that an average

person cannot know all the nuances. This is where we can help,” ex-

plains Kuusinen.

Each month the company receives approximately 28,000 different re-

quests (or tickets) from all over the world, mostly from Nordic countries,

and each needs to be solved in one telephone call. About 150 customer

support specialists are employed to solve the problems and altogether

they speak nine different languages. Most of the staff members are

Estonian, but there are also people who have moved here from Finland,

Norway, Sweden and Denmark. On a ten-point scale, the evaluation of

the speed, efficiency and friendliness in solving the problems within one

month is not allowed to fall under 9.2. “The feedback received from

customers in January rated us as 9.4,” he says.

Both Kuusinen and Kivirähk see enormous growth potential in terms

of customers and the labour market when it comes to offering user

support services. “It makes no sense for small companies to buy various

services from different companies. It is our advantage that as a large

company we are able to offer all services in one place,” says Kuusinen,

and offers the striking example of buying cheese from one shop and

sausages from another shop every day.

Although it may seem that the Estonian labour market is too small for a

service centre of this size, Ülle Kivirähk claims otherwise. “We continue

to create smart job positions and smart employees in Estonia. For exam-

ple, we expanded our Service Desk to Tartu, where there are many smart

young people due to the university.” She says that typically people think

of programming jobs when they think of IT, but according to research

those make up only 15-16% of all IT jobs. “Half of the jobs are in the

service centres and this is the main area of work where there will con-

tinue to be the most demand in the future,” she explains. Kivirähk says

that there may be fierce competition for IT specialists in development

companies in the small Estonian labour market, but Service Desk oppor-

tunities in employing staff are much broader. “We are able to provide an

opportunity to people who today are not great IT specialists. The most

important thing is language skills, and once that is there we train our

specialists ourselves.”

The Fujitsu IT Service Desk in Estonia functions so well that the company

decided last April to open its financial services centre in Estonia. Ülle

Kivirähk quotes research which demonstrates that the Estonian labour

market is even more promising when it comes to financial specialists.

“There are many more people with this know-how than there are IT

specialists,” she says. Currently the Fujitsu Financial Services Centre of-

fers simple services, such as the administration of purchase and internal

checks, but soon back office functions will be added. All these jobs are

done with the use of SAP economic management software, and the

company has already trained ten new licensed specialists and is plan-

ning to recruit 15 new people during the spring.

With his experience as a foreigner in Estonia, Kuusinen is happy to rec-

ommend Estonia to potential new investors. “Estonia has great infra-

structure: networks, electricity and public utilities,” he says, and adds

that, more importantly for him, Estonians have a Scandinavian-type

business culture. “People stick to their promises and they are very ac-

curate. I like the work motivation of Estonians. You are used to working,

not like some of your neighbours,” he says, with a smile.


The North-European Region for AGA contains

eight countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Fin-

land, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland.

If a customer from one of those countries

(with the exception of Iceland) contacts the

AGA customer service by fax, email or over

the web with a question or order, the issue is

most likely dealt with by our SSC in Estonia,

not by the local team in Sweden or Norway.

Since 2007, the unit with a complicated name

- AGA Region Europe North Shared Service

Centre – with forty staff members, has been

operating in Estonia. The unit is managed by

the Finn Johan Ginman.

The AGA Group sells various gases for welding,

cooling, heating, cleaning, laboratory analyses

etc. in the metallurgy industry, the chemi-

cal industry, the food industry, environmental

protection, electronics, construction, the phar-

maceutical industry etc. This means that the

company works with thousands of different

customers from diverse fields in many coun-

tries and cultural environments. The clientele

includes businesses – large factories and pro-

duction units – as well as domestic users.

AGA’s market share in most countries of the

Region Europe North is 60-70 per cent. “The

carbonation in your drinking water, and foods

packaged in a modified atmosphere - AGA

delivers the necessary gas. Not a day goes by

when an average citizen in Estonia who shops

for food or visits a restaurant does not have

something to do with AGA products,” claims

Johan Ginman.

Text and photos: Toivo Tänavsuu

The Nordic Customers of the Gas Giant AGA

Serviced From EstoniaFor the last seven years, the industrial gas company AGA has been serving its customers in the Nordics from Tallinn. The Estonian back office of the company continues to expand as jobs are being moved across the Gulf of Finland to Estonia.


I ECONOMY AND BUSINESSI ECONOMY AND BUSINESS

AGA REN SSC is a totally independent unit

which has nothing to do with gas production,

but instead deals with the questions, requests

and orders from the customers. AGA’s mecha-

nism of servicing requests is rather interesting.

Local customer service centres in Sweden,

Finland, Norway and other countries receive

phone calls from customers, in other words

handle requests where you have to deal with

customers directly on the phone. But if a re-

quest is sent electronically via e-mail, fax or

web order, it is dealt with in Tallinn. The Tallinn

back-office never deals with end customers di-

rectly on the phone, but the unit staff knows

enough Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Lat-

vian to handle electronic requests.

Ginman says that, in this way, the Tallinn of-

fice deals daily with thousands of customer

requests, such as a customer needing a copy

of a bill, needing a bill to be credited, or some-

one sending a purchase order. “Usually, the

customer doesn’t even notice that his request

is not being dealt with by a local team, as the

customer has either called or faxed a local

number, sent an e-mail to a local address or

logged onto a local website to place a web

order. In reality, we deal with as many requests

as possible,” describes Ginman. “This is not

meant to fool anybody; it’s just the way we are

set up!” he adds.

Ginman says that such a way of sharing the

load of customer service between units in dif-

ferent countries does not mean that responsi-

bility fades away. The Tallinn unit is responsible

for all requests which arrive in written form.

But how does AGA benefit from such a process?

Ginman says that people tend to believe that

shared service centres (SSC) are located in

countries with lower wages only in order to

save costs, but the achieved scale effect is one

more important part of the benefits. However,

for AGA the benefits lie also elsewhere: in

developing internal processes of the company.

“By having big centralised units like these, we

are continually proactively developing our pro-

cesses. If things end up on separate tables in

seven different countries and we see that there

are differences in how different tasks are pro-

cessed and worked with, then together with

the local units we look into best practices and

develop our processes. That means increased

efficiency and quality in client support!” says

Ginman.

The Tallinn back-office was created over six

years ago. Back then, there was still an eco-

nomic boom in Estonia. By that time, AGA

had centralised many of its customer service

centres in different countries. Ginman himself

took part in the process of uniting AGA units

in Finland, in Espoo. Several units were also

brought together in Sweden. The company

realised that this increased efficiency. The next

logical step was creating a regional SCC unit.

AGA weighed the pros and cons of creating a

back-office in Tallinn or Riga. Ginman says that

Estonia is ideally located to act as a hub for the

Baltic states and Scandinavia. But Tallinn was

mainly chosen over Riga because Estonians

have a more similar mentality to Scandinavians

and closer relations with Nordic countries than

Latvians do. “We have employed fifty people

in Estonia and we have been fortunate enough

to find dedicated and responsible staff. I am

not saying that Latvians and Lithuanians are

any different, but I can only say good things

about Estonians!” says Ginman.

In relation to staff specifications, AGA REN

SCC has a special niche in the Estonian job

market: in order to serve customers all over

the region one does not really have to speak

Estonian, which is a necessary prerequisite

with other employers. Therefore, the unit also

employs Russians, two Latvians, a Lithuanian,

a Finn and a Norwegian. Ginman says that the

company trains people from scratch: the main

prerequisite is the will to work.

In the future, AGA is planning to bring more

jobs from Scandinavia and other Baltic states

to Estonia. The unit managed by Ginman has

been growing by five to ten persons annually.

The latest developments have been bringing

the IT help-desk to Tallinn, which services AGA

employees, as well as advising them by phone.

“The most important for us is not the costs,

but to find a good concept. For example, in

the case of the Tallinn IT help-desk things are

turned upside down: this unit really serves as a

front desk, as they receive all phone calls from

AGA personnel in our region and if necessary

transfer them to specialists in other countries,”

explains Ginman.


The Billion-Euro Success Story

The SEB Wealth Management Competence Centre forEastern Europe is situated in Estonia. Why was Estonia

selected as the preferred location and how is daily cooperation with the head office organised? What are the main challenges and experiences? Sven Kunsing,

Board member of the SEB Wealth Management Estonia,considers it essential to focus on developing already

existing competence without pushing to conquer the world.

Sven Kunsing


I ECONOMY AND BUSINESSI ECONOMY AND BUSINESS

The Billion-Euro Success Story

After a certain period, we suggested to the

head office that we could redesign the whole

Eastern European fund offering to make it

more attractive to customers. By 2005, we

had won the trust of the headquarters and

took over the management of two other,

much larger, funds from the same London

company which had managed the first fund.

In late 2006 we launched the SEB Russia Fund

in Luxembourg and reorganised other funds.

We ended up with four different products to

offer clients: two general Eastern European

funds covering the whole region, one focusing

on small-cap and another on large-cap compa-

nies, and two separate funds covering Russia

and converging Europe.

In order to ramp up the coverage of our in-

vestment universe, we initially included our

Polish and Lithuanian SEB colleagues and also

shared the revenues. In 2008 the economic cri-

sis kicked in and together with the headquar-

ters we decided to reorganise our business in

Eastern Europe. The Polish asset management

company was sold, together with a part of our

team. This led to a decision to concentrate the

investment management of all Eastern Euro-

pean assets in Estonia. This decision also made

sense from an organisational point of view, be-

cause having a team of ten people distributed

between three countries would not have made

practical sense in the longer term.

Today we have a team of six professionals

working in Tallinn being in charge of East-

ern European equity funds with assets un-

der management of approx. 1 billion EUR. In

addition, two fund managers are managing

Eastern European bond investments, where

the current value of assets is 65 million EUR

and there is a clear growth perspective. Our

most important competitor is East Capital,

primarily in SEB’s home market in Sweden,

where before the crisis they used to be the

household name in regard to Eastern Euro-

pean investments.

What is your main focus today and how do you cooperate with the head office?SK: Today we offer the service of Eastern

European investment management to the

whole SEB Group. This applies to stocks and

bonds. Management of the Group’s funds

is organised on the Group’s IT platforms.

We log onto the Swedish computer systems

and the work in fact happens in Sweden,

although the people are physically based in

Estonia.

In addition, we have a third small team to

primarily manage pension funds in Estonia,

which to a large extent uses the know-how

of the Group, participates in a Stockholm-

led multi-management team and implements

its strategy in Estonian portfolios. This is the

Eastern European teams’ cooperation model

turned on its head, as we receive the know-

how from the head office and use it in Estonia

for Estonian clients.

Our cooperation model with the headquarters

looks like this: the general working principles

and business strategy come from the head-

quarters, we have a say in the development

of products for Eastern Europe and of course

we are responsible for the investment results.

There are clear investment guidelines which

we have to follow, but at the same time we

have the opportunity to provide feedback to

the head office when we feel that in order

to increase our competitiveness we need to

change our products or broaden the existing

guidelines.

What are your main challenges?SK: Actually, in the context of global finan-

cial markets, Eastern Europe is too narrow a

niche to really make a global breakthrough.

For that it would be necessary to focus on

global emerging markets. A couple of years

ago this function was also outsourced by SEB,

but it has been brought back into the com-

pany, similarly to Eastern European investment

management. We also thought about partici-

pating in the emerging markets team but, to

be honest, we do not currently have the com-

petence to have a say in, for example, Chinese

issues. In addition, the investment processes

of the global emerging markets team and the

Eastern European equity team principally differ

from each other. Our process is bottom-up: it

focuses on single companies and concentrates

on stock picking; the Swedish global emerging

markets team has a top-down process: it fo-

cuses on macro trends and allocation of assets

between countries. Hence, we decided not to

try to conquer the world from Tallinn, but in-

stead to focus on developing our competence

and on perfecting what we’re already good at.

In the past we decided to make sure that the

new products we brought to market were not

direct competitors of the solutions offered by

the headquarters. There have been such exam-

ples of product development by our competi-

tors and, of course, in an international group

this creates confusion, bad blood and in the

end it is the local and not the head office

which loses out.

How did it come about that SEB decided to use an Estonian team to manage Eastern European assets? Sven Kunsing (SK): The first mandate to man-

age a Luxembourg-domiciled mutual fund was

given to SEB Wealth Management Estonia

by the headquarters in June 2003. The deci-

sion was based on the fact that the Estonian

subsidiary of SEB had local competence, but

SEB had always outsourced the management

of Eastern European equities to a global in-

stitutional asset manager based in London.

One fund manager and a supporting team of

analysts were employed in Estonia to take care

of the portfolio. This was a small mutual fund

worth 130 million Swedish kroner, and our in-

vestment decisions and results were observed

from Sweden with great interest for a couple

of years. At first we had an advisory role – we

had an investment advisory agreement and

on the basis of our advice, a Stockholm-based

fund manager carried out actual transactions.


We have also talked about moving our unit

to Sweden but, as there are eight people in

the two teams and those people have fami-

lies, this has turned out to be too complicated.

From the point of view of corporate structure,

management and IT, this would perhaps make

sense, but from the perspective of individual

employees it does not.

What do you consider to be the one most important reason why Estonia is the location for wealth management in Eastern Europe?SK: I am confident that this is because of the

competence in Eastern European markets and

the tested know-how of our people. We are

good at it, which does not mean we are good

at everything. This is also illustrated by the fact

that we were not light-heartedly selected to

take over the global emerging markets area,

as the head office was not convinced that we

had the necessary competence. We are talk-

ing about the management of hundreds of

millions of euros, and those kinds of decisions

by the headquarters are taken only after thor-

ough consideration.

But we should not underestimate the role of

coincidences either. Ten years ago it was a lucky

coincidence that we had the competence, the

people, the product and a good track record.

And, at the same time, there were people in

the head office who understood this and de-

cided to give us this great opportunity.

What other locations were considered?SK: Of course, the people from the head of-

fice looked at the map and saw Poland, where

SEB also had a functioning asset management

company and which would have been a logical

location for managing Eastern European invest-

ments. But the Polish market itself is so large

that the asset managers there can just concen-

trate on their home country and not on the

whole region. In Estonia we are more open and

dynamic, our local market has always been too

small and has decreased over time in terms of

the choice of investments. Therefore, we always

looked at the whole Eastern European region as

our home market, and Estonia and the Baltic

states are just one part of that. In Poland, that

sort of thinking was secondary and the local

market always came first. When we brought in

our Polish colleagues to our team in 2005, they

were great specialists on Poland but they had

not done much analysis of the other Eastern Eu-

ropean markets before, not to speak of analys-

ing or visiting any companies there.

How would you sum up your expe-rience to date?SK: As we have managed well, the headquar-

ters has concentrated the Eastern European

investment management function in one place

and has even added new functions to the Es-

tonian operations every couple of years. Al-

though 2008 was a difficult year for everyone,

especially for Eastern Europe, it did not shake

the belief that the head office had in us. In the

aftermath of the crisis, we were actually given

additional responsibilities in 2009: in addition

to equity investments, also the management

of Eastern European fixed income investments

was relocated fully to Tallinn. Although today

this team deals mainly with managing institu-

tional money sourced from the Baltic states,

they have done this really well and it could be

that history will repeat itself and that, as early

as 2013, we will start to offer this competence

actively to the global clients of SEB. That may

easily lead to the next one billion euros finding

its way to a Tallinn-based investment team.

The team of the SEB Wealth Management Competence Centre for Eastern Europe offers the service

of Eastern European investment management to the whole SEB Group



Why mobile payments and not credit cardsIf you have ever played a game on your phone or tablet, you’ve probably

seen an option to buy virtual gold or unlock additional levels at some

point in the game. Or maybe you’ve thought about purchasing a virtual

Facebook birthday gift for your friend. Digital goods and services like

these are where Fortumo operates: by enabling users to make micro-

payments with their mobile phone and charging the amount to their

phone bill.

While previously the most popular method of paying for goods online

was the credit card, mobile payments are growing at an enormous pace:

the worldwide gross transaction volume for digital goods through mo-

bile payments is expected to more than double by 2015 to 268 billion

USD. There are several reasons why mobile payments have proven to be

superior to credit cards in the digital economy.

There are 4.7 billion mobile phone owners in the world, compared to

1.3 billion credit card owners. In emerging markets, the ratio of mobile

phones to credit cards can be tenfold. This means that mobile payments

give access to 3.4 billion additional customers, who would otherwise

have no access to making payments online.

Powering Mobile Payments for the World

Fortumo is a mobile payments company which started out as a homework assignment for a university class in 2000 in the city of Tartu, Estonia. It has now grown to be the largest mobile payments provider in the world in terms of coverage, operating in 73 countries and work-ing with companies such as Microsoft, Rovio and Electronic Arts. What exactly are mobile payments and how has Fortumo managed to capture the market?


The other reason for growth in mobile payments is the ease and speed of

transactions. While credit cards require filling out long forms to make pur-

chases, mobile payments take anywhere between one click and one mes-

sage. Conversion for payments as small as $0.49 can be up to ten times

higher with mobile payments due to the improved payment experience.

Angry Birds helped to put Fortumo on the global mapWith a huge potential customer base and double-digit growth, mobile

payments are a fruitful market and Fortumo has managed to capture

a large portion of it. Not least amongst Fortumo’s customers is Rovio,

the most successful mobile games developer of all time. Rovio’s Angry

Birds franchise has received more than 1 billion downloads over the

past few years.

It was with Rovio that Fortumo initially put itself on the global map in

2010 by becoming the payment provider for Angry Birds on Android.

The company’s advantage was being the first to market on the relatively

new operating system. Embracing new technologies and aggressively

expanding into growing markets has proven to be a success so far.

At the end of 2012, Fortumo was the first to launch on a new platform

again, this time with Windows 8, just five days after the general avail-

ability of Microsoft’s new operating system. Now the company is closely

looking at the developer audience to see whether they will take on the

new platform like they did with Android, something which was not

certain in 2010 with Android.

Intel Capital investment leads to quicker growthOperating in uncertain environments is where Fortumo thrives and, though

the numbers show that it has grown beyond a start-up, the company has

still kept its start-up mentality. Only measurable steps are taken and in-

efficient activities are cut off, new employees are required to read “Lean

Start-up” and the office environment is kept casual, but highly productive.

The strategy has proven to be a success. Fortumo was selected as the

Best Estonian Company by the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and In-

dustry in 2011 and, at the beginning of 2013, welcomed on board new

investors from Intel Corporation and the venture capital firm Greycroft

Partners. With backing from such high-profile shareholders, Fortumo

plans to extend its lead over its competitors even more.

In January 2013, the company created an internal testing laboratory

and aims to create at least one minimum viable product per month. It

is also in the final stages of closing deals with three of the five largest

mobile phone operators in the world and is talking with several major

Asian mobile phone manufacturers to get games using Fortumo’s pay-

ments preloaded into their devices.

No plans to leave EstoniaEven though Fortumo has set its sights on global expansion, with of-

fices in San Francisco and Beijing, its headquarters and the heart of

its activities are still located in Tartu, an Estonian university town with

approximately 100,000 inhabitants. Martin Koppel, the co-founder of

Fortumo explains why: “Per capita, Estonia probably has one of the

largest start-up communities in the world, so the business climate is re-

ally great for running an IT company. In addition, there is a lot of talent

coming out of the universities in Tallinn and Tartu, which allows us to ex-

pand our growing team. The small size of the country, combined with a

strong IT infrastructure, allows us to react to change very quickly, which

gives us a huge competitive advantage in the international market.”

You can get more information about Fortumo by visiting

www.fortumo.com

For insights into the mobile payments industry, check out their blog at

blog.fortumo.com

President Ilves visited Fortumo, the Best Estonian Company of 2011, on 3 May 2012.



Üllar Jaaksoo, Head of NOW!Innovations,

a company developing mobile payment

solutions, likes to use this phrase in order

to break the ice when he is introducing his

company to potential partners. This icebreaker

tends to work because, internationally, Estonia

and mobile parking have become almost

synonyms, and the idea is already old to

Estonians.

“Already My Grandpa Knew How To Park His Horse With His Mobile Phone”

Photo: Jarek Jõepera


Life in Estonia asked Jaaksoo to talk about what it has been like to build

up a globally ambitious company from an office space near the Tallinn

Airport, and to share his vision of his business area’s global future. This

is what Üllar Jaaksoo had to say:

Into business by chance

We found the first customer for mobile parking somewhat by chance,

when the town of Antwerp in Belgium announced a public procure-

ment to find a mobile parking operator. The procurement rules stat-

ed that there had to be more than two applicants and so, almost by

chance, we entered the procurement with a local partner and won.

We developed a parking system in 14 Belgian towns, but as we did

not want to be the operators but focus on developing the technology

instead, we sold our share. We then used the opportunity to invest in an

m-parking company in the USA founded by entrepreneurs with foreign

Estonian backgrounds, and this is currently our main and only market as

a service provider. In all other markets in the world where we operate,

we are the platform service provider.

On global ambitions

What country does Skype come from? What about ABB? Oracle? No-

body says that ABB is a Swiss company and Oracle a US one. They are

international enterprises. This also applies to us. Our platform is licensed

in our office in Amsterdam; in the USA, we are present in 45 differ-

ent towns as ParkNOW! and the US office is located in New York. We

have licensed our platform to several Central and East European states

- Ukraine, Macedonia and Russia - and we have a partner in Shang-

hai. Software development is done in Estonia. When you look at the

homepages of companies, you realise that they all use the Wordpress

engine. Anyone who wants to create a web shop uses Magento. We

want our area to develop the same way: everyone who wants to or-

ganise a parking system will use the payment technology we have

developed. Why should a local government in Macedonia or an office

building in New York create the entire information system from scratch

if they can simply order it from us, so that in a month a system specifi-

cally geared to their needs is up and running? We believe that we offer

the best service at the best price, and this is what makes a winner.

On the opportunities they offer

Our goal is to make parking so comfortable and fast for drivers that

they will not notice any problems. Why do people drive cars? In order

to park! For example, it is possible to enter a parking garage so that

the barrier opens via an RFID code or NFC so quickly that one does not

have to wait at all. We also offer a solution where the barrier opens

immediately after automatically recognising the license plate. It is also

possible to open a gate by showing the appropriate QR code to the

scanner. When parking on a city street, one can pay for parking by call-

ing a phone number or by simply sending a text message. We are also

working to make the payment after parking as simple as possible. Leav-

ing a parking area is also something that can be recognised automati-

cally and customers do not necessarily have to go to a specific kiosk to

show their ticket. You can pay by mobile phone bill, PayPal, credit card

or direct bank payment, or sometimes with a prepaid parking card. We

offer technology which crosses platforms to make it as convenient as

possible for customers.

In the long term, it is possible to develop technology which will inform

drivers of the location of free parking spaces. Do you know that up to

40% of traffic in cities is related to looking for a free parking space? It

would be too expensive to install a sensor which would recognise a car

leaving. And it would not always be helpful, as by the time you get to

the spot, there would already be a queue of cars waiting to park there

and this may actually make traffic worse. People tend to stop paying for

mobile parking several minutes before they actually get to their cars!

We can use this information successfully in order to give people who

are looking for parking spaces a longer time to react. That is all just

around the corner!

In Estonia, we also offer the service of charging electric cars in coopera-

tion with ABB, and this follows the same logic.

On the future of mobile parking

Although we in Estonia cannot imagine our lives without mobile park-

ing, in most of the world it is still a utopia. Our problem is partly due to

the fact that we are too far ahead of the times! Even a couple of years

ago, our ideas were too utopian for many potential partners and many

projects did not get the go-ahead. But today we are witnessing a boom

in mobile parking globally. At the moment 45 cities in the USA are using

our technology to organise parking, and more and more cities are an-

nouncing public procurements. Our definite ambition is to become the

first choice in the US market. Our current position does not guarantee

victory, as only a small part of the market potential is being used. The

real dividing of the market is still ahead, probably within the next couple

of years.

On investors

In order to be there when the market is divided up, we are looking for

a new investment round for our company. In two rounds, investments

have been made by Enterprise Estonia, the furniture producer Bellus

and the forestry company Artiston. We will definitely bring more inter-

national members into our leadership team. We are currently looking

for about ten new people for the team. We are growing fast, and sales

profits are multiplying each year. Cars have been parked tens of millions

of times using our technology. I am convinced that this number will

soon add an additional zero!

* On the eve of sending the magazine Life in Estonia to the printing

house, we received the news that the BMW iMobility Services had

signed an agreement with NOW! Innovations. It sees BMW extending

the scope of ParkNow beyond parking garages to include on-street

parking as well. “In the era of smartphones, applications and plat-

forms we are fascinated by the opportunity to improve the daily lives

of all motorists. Seamless parking payments and personalised services

are our ultimate goal. In partnership with such a visionary company as

the BMW Group we will have a greater chance to accommodate the

transition from analogue to digital parking. We are looking forward to

providing a game changing solutions for BMW Mobility Service, “

comments Üllar Jaaksoo, NOW! Innovations CEO.



The New Generation Parcel Terminal

Set To Conquer Europe

Not all smart business solutions created in Estonia originate in

the capital Tallinn or the main university town Tartu. One such

example is Cleveron, a company which develops and produces

automated parcel delivery systems: it has its roots in the small

provincial town of Viljandi. The company considers such giants

as Amazon and Google to be among its potential customers.

Like many great ideas in the world, Cleveron was born out of the need

to find a practical solution for problems which the founders of the com-

pany were experiencing. In 2006, Arno Kütt, Peep Kuld and Indrek

Oolup were running the online interior decoration store on24.ee. Pur-

chases made by the customers of the online shop were delivered to

them via the national postal company Eesti Post. However, the service

offered by Eesti Post was not of sufficient quality for Kütt, who then

decided to create a courier service attached to on24.ee which delivered

products to clients. Soon such well-established catalogue retailers as

Quelle and Hobby Hall started to use the courier service created by Kütt.

This is how the first network of parcel delivery systems, called Smart-

Post, was born. In 2008, when SmartPost launched its network, the

company had 30 parcel terminals all over Estonia. ”Customers took to

us quickly and we started to develop fast. Our network of terminals

also expanded,” recalls Kütt, who has now moved to Tallinn, where the

sales and IT centre of the company is based. Development work and

production are still based in Viljandi, where the company plans to start

building a new and more powerful factory in the near future. ”I could

not have dreamt of a more ideal environment for our product than the

one we ourselves created in shopping centres all over Estonia,” says

Kütt.

The network of parcel terminals grew so fast that in just two years every

fifth Estonian had used the service. Soon the investors Estonian Devel-

opment Fund and the investment company WNB came on board. As

the system quickly proved itself, it was decided to find a new owner to

handle the daily operation of business and to focus energies on perfect-

ing the technology and on export. ”We offered the network of parcel

terminals to six different postal companies and the best offer came from

the Finnish firm Itella.” The network was sold to Itella, which has ex-

panded the network in Estonia to a hundred terminals and has built an

even larger operation in Finland. Kütt`s company focuses on perfecting

the technology and is cooperating closely with Itella in this regard.


”Our goal is to offer a solution to the problem of how customers can

receive products they have ordered over the Internet in the most con-

venient way,” says Kütt. He explains that the system of parcel terminals

is beneficial to end users of e-shopping, to retailers and to the postal

company. ”Customers do not have to be at home waiting for the cou-

rier, the retailers can organise the logistics of goods more comfortably,

and it is cheaper, as it reduces the need for expensive labour.”

The parcel terminals are mostly located in places which are on most

people’s daily routes, for example in large shopping centres. This means

that courier companies do not have to take parcels to people’s homes,

which is why they save time and kilometres. Customers, on the other

hand, can pick up their goods in their own time as part of their daily

rhythm. “The most expensive bit of the business model is renting the

area in large shopping centres,” says Kütt, adding that with automated

parcel systems currently a person does not have to reach higher than 1.5

metres. This however elongates the row of terminals. Kütt notes that

rooms in shopping centres are often at least four metres in height and

this means a lot of potential space is wasted.

To tackle this problem, Cleveron has developed the prototype of its par-

cel terminal 2.0, which will be piloted in Finland in the next few months.

Kütt confirms that the new terminal saves four times more space, as it

grows upwards and not sideways. The terminal no longer has dozens

of separate drawers for various parcels, but just one door which can be

used to insert a parcel you want to send and to receive a parcel which

has been sent to you. The rest of the work - where to put the right par-

cel and how to access the parcel for the customer - is done by internal

robotics. The terminal, which takes up an area of a couple of square

metres, can hold up to 720 different parcels. This terminal has also been

developed in Viljandi, a town of less than 20,000 inhabitants. Naturally,

the concept of the new terminal is currently being patented.

One of the shareholders of Cleveron is the investment company WNB.

“For us the business idea of the company was simple and it made

sense,” says Ivar Siimar from WNB. He says that for postal compa-

nies this is the most comfortable and economical existing solution and

therefore Cleveron has great potential. “The business model of parcel

terminals is set to boom in the next few years,” he says, and gives the

example of Amazon and Google going down the same road. “They

are not big competition for us; we tend to see them more as potential

customers.”

He considers Cleveron to have two main goals at the moment: to get

the new generation terminal ready for the “production line”, and to

enter the market in other countries than Estonia, Finland and Russia,

where the company currently operates. “We are looking towards Scan-

dinavia and towards western Europe, where labour costs are high and

our advantages are therefore more obvious,” says Siimar. He doesn’t

reveal any specific plans but says that the company wishes to develop

its own network of terminals in the new markets, and not just remain a

technology provider. “For this reason, we plan to bring in local partners

or investors.”

Siimar has no doubts about the potency of Cleveron. “We have spent

the last three years making a profit and once a year the company’s coun-

cil is faced with the question of how much to pay out in dividends.”

Arno Kütt by the prototype of the Cleveron parcel terminal 2.0

Ivar Siimar



Ivar Siimar


Text: Eve Heinla

Although Estonia is a small country, with 1.3 million inhabitants, there are dozens of well-known biomedical and biotechnology companies here.

The Estonian Biotechnology Association has 30 members, including companies and research institutions. The success story of Quattromed HTI,

which is the largest private capital-based biotechnology company in Estonia, active for 16 years, reads as a textbook case...

Erki Mölder (37), the long-time Executive Director and current Chair-

man of the Council, recalls that the company was started by Mart Ustav,

Professor of Biomedical Technology. It was Professor Ustav who in 1999

asked a fresh graduate of the Department of Economics – Mölder – to

come assist him.

“In hindsight, it is quite comical to think about how it all began,” says

Mölder, with a laugh. “At first there were two lab assistants working

in a tiny basement room at the university, with a single laminar hood

in the corner... Our first client was the private hospital Fertilitas. In the

morning, they would send a dozen tests in plastic bags from Tallinn on

the cargo bus to Tartu, where the girls picked them up at the bus sta-

tion, then returned to the lab and ran the first procedures, then went to

the park to have some ice cream until the tests were finished,” Mölder

recalls the early days.

The Breakthrough of Quattromed:From University Basement To International MedicalCompany



Fertile ground to startHe admits that there were certainly people who

wondered what they were doing in that basement

and says that today it would not be possible to

start this kind of a company under similar condi-

tions. The situation in Estonia in the late 1990s was

quite different from today. But the medical lab got

off to a good start because future clients – doctors

from every field – were involved in the develop-

ment of each test.

“They were opinion leaders in Estonian society. If

you need to develop something, do it together

with your customers. At the same time, the Esto-

nian Genome Centre was being founded in Estonia

on the initiative of Professor Andres Metspalu. [The

Estonian Genome Centre of the University of Tartu

manages a collection of health, heritage and gene

data on the Estonian people, combining data from

over 50,000 donors.] This helped to raise public

awareness, there was a lot of talk about biotech-

nology, and at that time, as a young lad, I jumped

on the bandwagon of biotechnology and went

along for the ride! After all, the impact of the Ge-

nome Centre on our society was huge and attrac-

tive! It can be said that the market in this field in

Estonia was empty and it was shouting for such

companies. Large international corporations were

selling such tests for about 40 dollars each. But the

price of our services was 10 Euros – three to four

times cheaper!”

Today Quattromed employs 100 people who work

in a 1,000 sq metre lab in Tallinn and a 600 sq

metre one in Tartu. In addition there are about ten

other labs all over Estonia.

In reality there is quite a high chance of failing like

most start-ups do, because the founders of such

companies are very enthusiastic and they love their

“baby” so much that they become blind, they fall

in love with their own technology. This is especially

true for scientists who are so attached to their cre-

ations that they do not see the business as a whole.

“What is important is not only what the lab work-

ers are doing in their labs, but how it is all present-

ed to the customer, how it is logistically organised,

what is the concept of the service...In other words,

how to sell and this is often what is lacking for

research-heavy spin-offs. They think that if we do

something new, everyone will line up and want to

buy it. You can create whatever you want in your

lab, but if the world knows nothing about you, you

won’t get anywhere. In Quattromed we were able

to work in a way which benefited the clients.”

Path to the international marketEntering the Finnish market required thorough

preparations and research. The work on reaching

our northern neighbours began already in 2005-

2006. “We visited the Finnish labs, offered to col-

laborate... everyone was polite, but nothing came

of it... In 2010, we attended a trade fair which

was visited by doctors and heads of clinics, in other

words the customers of services. Again they po-

litely listened to what we had to say, but there was

no result.”

The breakthrough came in the end of 2011 when

the Estonians saw a result for their hard work.

“We started negotiations with some private hos-

pital chains in Finland. They had just announced a

public procurement. And as we had just employed

a Finnish project manager, we were able to par-

ticipate in the procurement together with Finnish

labs, and in September 2012 they selected us for

the contract!”

Quattromed HTI Laboratories

is the largest private capital based

medicine laboratory in Estonia,

with more than 16 years of

experience

The company’s main area of

activity is offering laboratory

services to its customers – family

physicians, providers of ambula-

tory care and specialised medical

care, centres of workplace health-

care, various public institutions

and private persons. The labora-

tory service includes collecting

and transporting test materials,

carrying out laboratory analyses,

validating results and providing

required information to custom-

ers, consultations of laboratory

specialists upon request, provid-

ing information to clients for the

better organisation of work and

implementing new strategies.

The company employs over 100

staff who work in the central

laboratories in Tallinn and Tartu

and in network laboratories and

blood testing stations all over

Estonia. 2.2 million laboratory

analyses are carried out annually.

Over 4,500 different samples are

handled on a daily basis.

The list of laboratory analyses

includes up to 200 different rou-

tine clinical analyses which can be

carried out on location. But with

the help of different partner labs,

clients have access to practically

all very specific, rarely ordered

laboratory analyses from all fields

of contemporary laboratory

medicine.


Blood testing of athletes

Erki Mölder, Chairman of the

Council of Quattromed, explains

that they have a cooperation

agreement with the national ski

team, to research if there are

blood tests which would clarify

whether athletes should train less

or more.

“This is perhaps more an issue in

amateur sports – there are after

all many people who participate

in ski marathons, etc. It enables

to analyse whether to train and

how to train and whether there

is a set of indicators which would

enable to evaluate the training

load.

Testikodus.ee

For several years, Quattromed

HTI Laboratories have offered the

unique service of testing oneself

at home for Sexually Transmitted

Infections (STI’s). A test kit can be

ordered via the webpage, and it

is then sent to the customer by

post in a neutral envelope.

The test involves taking a sample

with the help of the accompany-

ing guidelines and sending it to

the laboratory. After three or four

days, the test result can be seen

when logging in to the online

platform. If a STI is found, the

client is referred to specialists.

Via the webpage www.testiko-

dus.ee you can order test kits

for the herpes virus, urogenital

chlamydiosis, gonorrhoea, my-

coplasmosis, and trichomoniasis

with specific guidelines on how

to test oneself.

The testing period is currently in process, there is

still time until July when Quattromed will begin to

offer its lab services in Finland. “We have taken

ten years to develop the concept of our services

and what we offer is partly even better and faster

than what’s available in Finland.”

Mölder emphasises that trust plays a huge role

in medicine and in biotechnology. “The medical

market is quite local and national. The markets

have been conservative.”

Then he suddenly asks: “Would you be willing to

send your blood sample to Russia, to Pskov? No?

But if a Pskov company creates a subsidiary, hires

Estonian managers and sells its services with an

Estonian face thereby creating trust, would you

not say why not and do it? This is exactly what we

are trying to do in Finland – the management of

Finnish units consists of Finns, of people who are

established in Finland.

“Or take Lithuania where we are also active. 99

per cent of our turnover in Estonia comes from

family physicians, hospitals, and clinics. But in

Lithuania, 60 per cent comes from patients di-

rectly, as the system is different. In Lithuania a

doctor gives you a referral and tells you to take

some tests and find a lab yourself!”

After the breakthrough in Finland, Quattromed

has no plans to rest on its laurels but is looking

into the future. Of course things do not happen

overnight in the biomedical business...

“The first wave is Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and

Finland...we used to have a market with 1.3 mil-

lion inhabitants and now we are already look-

ing at 12 million. The next step will be Sweden.

At least we are thinking about it, but even Finns

have a hard time establishing themselves in Swe-

den,” Mölder talks about the next challenge.

There are quite a few companies in Estonia which

have established themselves in biomedicine. And

the Estonians have their own special trump card.

Mölder says that the problem of ‘old Europe’ is

that people may be great specialists in their fields

but they are quite helpless when pulled out of

their specific fields.

“The people who have received their education

and experiences during the Soviet times and the

1990s, were forced to work with different meth-

odologies and therefore they have a bigger set

of skills. We have the apparatus, the technology

and the people and we have absolutely nothing

to be embarrassed of in the field of biomedi-

cine and biotechnology in comparison to Finns,

Swedes or anyone else in the world!”

Has Mölder ever been back to the little basement

room where Quattromed started all those years

ago? “No, I haven’t had a nostalgic moment

where I wanted to go visit it again,” he laughs.

And why should he – there are new things to look

forward to.

Estonian Scientist Designs Mutant Mice With Human GenesMario Plaas, a scientist at the University of Tartu, has spent the last couple of years modelling the world’s first mouse with human genes, which would be infect-able with the hepatitis virus C (HCV). It is estimated that 150-200 million people worldwide suffer from this chronic infection of HCV, and each year up to four million new cases of the disease are registered. As no effective medication exists to date, pharmaceutical companies are desperate for the rodents designed by Plaas in order to test future medications on them.

Text: Roald JohannsonPhotos: Ove Maidla


I EDUCATION & SCIENCE

For the well-being of the whole planet

In the words of Professor Sulev Kõks, who is a colleague of Mario’s and

the Vice Dean of Science of the University of Tartu Faculty of Medicine,

Plaass lab works for the good of the whole planet. “There are no other

people like Mario, not in Estonia or in surrounding areas. He is the only

person who can carry out transgenic technology to the last detail. In ad-

dition, he is able to develop new models and have his own intellectual

input into them,” says Kõks.

Mario Plaas’s next intellectual input, “C-hepatitis mice”, promises a

breakthrough in the world’s pharmaceutical industry. More than a mil-

lion people die annually as a result of the chronic infection of HCV.

Frequent consequences of the illness are liver cirrhosis and liver cancer

and the results of these are the main reason for liver transplant opera-

tions. In 2009, HCV medication was sold in the sum of 4.4 billion US

dollars globally, and it is predicted that this sum may grow to 8.5 billion

USD by 2016.

“Currently there are no good medicines and vaccines against HCV. The

development of those has been significantly hindered by the lack of a

small and cheap test animal who could be infected with hepatitis virus

C. Mice are ideally suited for this,” explains the young Estonian scientist

who has dedicated ten years to designing live rodents. “Mice are the

only animals whose genes we can switch like this. Other animals have

to be cloned, but with mice it is easy.”

Scientist, not businessman

Currently, the spin-off company KPA Scientific OÜ, which is managed

by Plaas, has reached a stage in its R&D project that they have begun

cooperative projects with Rockefeller University in the States, where one

of the leading labs in the field of human HCV research and infection is

situated. In addition to Rockefeller University, large contributions to the

project have come from the Archimedes Foundation. In addition, KPA

Scientific OÜ was selected as one of the finalists of the first Estonian-

American Innovation Award.

As the first infection tests of the genetically modified mice look promis-

ing, several top European labs have already shown interest in Mario

Plaas’s designed creatures. The fruits of the breakthrough of the young

Estonian on the global drug development market can probably be

reaped in four to five years.

“From the business point of view, I want to finalise the mice here, but I

do not want to sell them myself,” Plaas says about his future plans. “My

idea would be to sell the service. I am looking for scientists or repre-

sentatives of pharmaceutical companies who will give me the molecules

to test and I will then provide them with information about whether and

what kind of effect they have on a concrete animal.”

What should potential customers know before they go mice-shopping

in Plaas’s lab? For one thing, the price of a transgenic mouse equals the

cost of a proper car. But considering that three per cent of the people

in the world suffer from liver damage caused by hepatitis virus C, large

pharmaceutical companies should not consider the price of a super-

mouse modelled by Mario Plaas too high.

It is quite late in the morning, but during this darkest time of the year

the daylight has not yet triumphed over the darkness. On a narrow

street, there is a tall building with a very bright light on in one window.

Behind the window is the operating table and a man clad in a white

robe and rubber gloves is at work. Gently, but firmly he lifts the cute

little mouse girl onto the table whilst his other hand reaches for the

scalpel.

“This is the place now where you cannot have a shaky hand, as there is

no room for mistakes,” he whispers and with a swift cut opens up the

skin of the anaesthetized rodent and then the stomach lining. “To get

HCV into mouse liver, you just have to replace some of the mouse genes

with human ones!”

You might think that this scene comes straight out of a surreal story of

animal testing by the mad genius doctor Moreau, but no – these events

are not taking place on an island isolated from the rest of the world, but

right here in the Main Lab of Transgenic Technology of the University

of Tartu.

“Mice have exactly the same genes as humans, with some modifica-

tions, and those differences prevent HCV from entering. My task is to

just replace a part of mouse CD81 and Occludin gene with human ge-

netic material and theoretically that should be enough for hepatitis to

enter the rodent’s liver cells” explains the Head of the Lab, the 32-year-

old Mario Plaas.

Lifting the genetically modified cell stems into the embryo is real preci-

sion work. First, Mario pulls about 10-15 cells inside a tiny needle, and

then with another pin grabs the embryo, makes a tiny hole in it with a

needle and injects the new cells. Then the same embryos with modi-

fied cells have to be transplanted back inside the mouse’s uterus. The

operation does not last long. It only takes three minutes, the uterus is

carefully replaced back inside the stomach, a couple of stitches and it’s

done. When the animal wakes up, it is slightly dozy but pregnant! And

only some weeks later a new genetically modified life form has come

into being with the fate of being a testing animal for pharmaceutical

companies and serving humankind.


Estonia Innovates in Higher Education:

First Interdisciplinary And Practical Entrepreneurship

Programme In The World

Text: Toivo Tänavsuu / photos: DDVE

A unique master’s degree programme for creating and growing

global online businesses – DDVE – has been functioning at

the University of Tartu for two years. The curriculum combines

theory with practice in an interdisciplinary mix of

entrepreneurship, technology, art and design.

DDVE students pay carefulattention to evaluating the worth of their business concepts.



“Google, Facebook and Skype – these global

giants all sprang from a good idea. The ideas

themselves were not unique: many people had

thought of creating a proper search engine

or improving social interaction online. It isn’t

sufficient to have an innovative technological

solution to create a successful IT product. It is

also necessary to understand how viable the

idea is, what the needs of users are, to know

product and business development, to be able

to effectively manage a team, to understand

product packaging and sales - and all of this

in the context of international competition.”

This is how the topic is presented in the in-

troduction of the new master’s curriculum De-

sign and Development of Virtual Environments

(DDVE) of Tartu University Viljandi Culture

Academy. The University of Tartu, established

in 1632 by King Gustavus Adolphus of Swe-

den, is one of Europe’s oldest universities, but

it ranks first in innovation by providing modern

practical education to its students.

It is an “unprecedented entrepreneurial, in-

terdisciplinary and practical programme, de-

signed to teach international IT product and

business development in a modern way”.

Many graduates of business programmes are

finding that the knowledge they acquired is

not very marketable, as these schools produce

people strong in theory, but lacking in practical

experience and applied skills.

The DDVE programme was born seven years

ago from the “I have a dream” idea of An-

zori Barkalaja, Rector of the Viljandi Cultural

Academy. He wanted to properly innovate the

established cultural higher education institu-

tion, to complement existing areas (traditional

handicraft, stage design etc.) with such 21st

century “arts” as robotics, and video and light

technology, uniting arts and technology with

the aim of producing new “smart” teaching

aids and other solutions.

The developers of the new master’s programme

DDVE then talked with Estonian IT entrepre-

neurs, who complained that their businesses

were not only lacking quality workers but that

existing workers could benefit from a wider

world-view and better cooperation skills. In

general, developers are excited about writing

their code, but they couldn’t care less what

happens afterwards. Business people are good

at numbers, but do not have a clue about

technological nuances. Both developers and

business people have a limited understanding

of design and user-centred thinking. Thanks to

the input of the Estonian ICT industry, the new

programme focuses on tech entrepreneurship.

Financed by the Social Fund of the EU, DDVE

brings these different areas together; it links

arts and design with business and technol-

ogy, offering students a wide spectrum of

knowledge, the “skill of orienting oneself”,

which is so important these days, producing

an interdisciplinary approach! The Programme

Manager of DDVE, Kristjan Mändmaa, says

that in the global educational landscape it is

unique to comprehensively link these three ar-

eas in one programme; even the much-praised

Aalto University in Finland, the forerunner of

the multi-disciplinary approach to higher edu-

cation, has not yet fully succeeded.

In autumn 2011, the first twenty students

commenced work on the DDVE degree. From

the very beginning, the student mix has been

international: there are students from Latvia,

Finland and India in the programme. DDVE

is, above all, different from other MBA pro-

grammes in that the teaching takes place

on weekends, enabling all students to work

full-time.

DDVE is a Tartu University Master's Program with study sessions taking place in Tallinn Tehnopol's Startup Incubator


From the first lecture on, theory and practice

go hand in hand: by the end of each semester,

every student team develops a start-up pro-

ject. They work in parallel on business models,

researching customers’ problems and looking

for solutions, focusing in depth on questions

of technology and design. Students regularly

pitch their ideas to each other and to visit-

ing mentors. They smooth over their Business

Model Canvases and put their heads together

to find paying customers.

The students also learn how to sharpen their

focus. They learn how not to try to solve all

problems at once with their start-ups. Most

businesses, after all, do not die out because

they don’t have products, but because they are

unable to sell their products. Everybody wants

to invent something, without asking how

those inventions improve the world, and who

will pay for them. The goal of DDVE students,

as budding entrepreneurs, is to sell their pro-

jects to investors by the end of the year, thus

launching their live prototypes. This all goes

hand in hand with intensive team-building

work.

What is most interesting about the DDVE pro-

gramme is that many of the tutors are not aca-

demic professors, but leading experts in their

fields, and some of them do not even have

university degrees.

Among the tutors and mentors of DDVE to

date are the US venture capitalist Bill Payne,

the Estonian MP and founder of Rate.ee An-

drei Korobeinik, and former key workers at

Skype, including the co-founder of the com-

pany Ahti Heinla.

Mändmaa says that DDVE is an experiment

which will develop over time. As the pro-

gramme was not copied from Aalto in Finland,

Stanford in the USA or MIT, it’s hard to learn

from the mistakes of others.

One person who got immediately hooked on

the idea of DDVE is Yrjö Ojasaar, who has

worked in the USA as a lawyer and is today the

Chairman of the Board of the Estonian Service

Industry Association and one of Estonia’s most

esteemed experts on entrepreneurship.

“When I first heard about the idea of DDVE, I

thought: courageous guys; they are going for

the most revered and oldest of systematically

established institutions: the university system.

The Western world’s universities persist largely

unchanged from medieval times, with a mo-

nopoly on power and a clear hierarchy: PhDs

who have the right to teach master’s students

who have the right to teach bachelor’s stu-

dents and so on,” says Ojasaar, who is a tutor

and mentor at DDVE.

“Now they are going to shake those founda-

tions! Enterprise and technology today do not

allow for a rigid hierarchical system, i.e. if you

are fast and dynamic, you will surpass the gi-

ants: we no longer use AOL or take photos

with a Kodak! Education too has to keep up.

The experience of the industry must find its

way to the classroom.”

Ojasaar has witnessed the fact, in Estonia and

elsewhere, that, on one hand, there are many

unemployed people and, on the other hand,

employers complain that they cannot find peo-

ple who are good enough: clearly there is a

mismatch in the education market. This is the

dilemma which DDVE is trying to tackle.

Ojasaar and Mändmaa are convinced that in-

terdisciplinarity is one of the most important

skills of future leaders. People need to learn

to do different things, to orientate themselves

in several fields and to work together with

diverse people and changing projects. In this

way they will find brand new opportunities in

areas where different disciplines overlap.

Kristjan Mändmaa Markko KaruYrjö Ojasaar

Products and services invented by DDVE students aim to solve real problems, and make life better for everyone



Himshwet Gaurav, a DDVE student from India, who lives and works in Estonia:

“I had been working on my ideas and

approaching investors for over a year

and a half. Gradually, with each failure,

it dawned on me that I was making

novice mistakes repeatedly and needed

to educate myself in the field of entre-

preneurship. I also felt the need for a

vibrant ecosystem for start-ups, with like

minded people.

“Estonia” appeared in numerous blogs,

and the websphere was full of stories

about its rising start-up scene. Through

my search, I came across the DDVE pro-

gramme and it was a Godsend.

DDVE is nothing like an MBA pro-

gramme. While an MBA curriculum

focuses on how to manage an already

established business, DDVE focuses on

creating new SAAS-based products and

services with viable and scalable busi-

ness models. It is about creating an en-

terprise, not managing it, and this craft

is very different from normal manage-

ment practices.

DDVE’s hands-on approach is what

sets it apart from other master’s pro-

grammes. Students work in teams to

develop a new product every semester

and practice the craft of creating enter-

prises in a real environment.

From an academic point of view, DDVE

is a very bold and innovative step. Our

professors are practitioners from in-

dustry, and lectures are held in a work-

shop format, lasting one day, where

we are introduced to tools and the

best practices of the trade, beyond the

fundamentals.”

“It is also important for such a small country as

Estonia to achieve as high value as possible. We

will never win by training armies of program-

mers and scientists in a country of 1.3 million:

China and India will always be larger! We have

to focus on training leaders with high added

value skills, and they will be able to bring to-

gether Chinese developers, Swedish designers

and British managers,” says Ojasaar.

Of the start-up projects born as part of the

DDVE master’s programme, many have just

remained “school homework”. But the most

successful project to date, the mobile queue

manager Qminder for remote queuing, is try-

ing to enter several foreign markets. Qminder

enables one to book a place in any queue (e.g.

in a bank, government office or another service

provider) via a mobile phone and know when it

will be your turn, while taking care of business

somewhere else. The project has grown into

a company which has received funding from

Seedcamp and the prototype funder Prototron,

among others.

Markko Karu, the co-founder of Qminder and

a DDVE student, says that the project began in

August 2011, when the students were given

their first task, participating in the hackathlon

Garage48 in Tartu. This is where the Qminder

team met and the application was born.

“In the case of Qminder, I have been able to ap-

ply many DDVE lecture topics and tools straight

away. I have definitely benefited from this

education, perhaps not in places where I was

expecting, as the knowledge and skills tend

to be such that you can see the logical chain

only in hindsight. DDVE was originally meant to

prepare IT-project leaders, and the whole start-

up topic came up unexpectedly for me and for

many others,” Karu comments. Now Qminder

is the topic of Karu’s master’s thesis!

This spring the first 10-12 students will gradu-

ate from the DDVE master’s programme, which

holds its lectures in the Tehnopol business in-

cubator in Tallinn, next to the Skype headquar-

ters, IT College, and the Tallinn University of

Technology. Thanks to DDVE, many students

have already found jobs which are better, more

interesting or carry more responsibility than the

ones they had before, as they are now able

to ask the right questions and see hidden nu-

ances. They win out in disagreements or nego-

tiations with colleagues by using knowledge

gained from the DDVE programme.

“And even if a DDVE graduate does not be-

come a technology start-upper, every employer

wants to have someone on their team who is

able to manage him or herself and motivate

others, bring the team along, stick to the budg-

et and understand the needs of customers.

Those characteristics are eternal!” says Ojasaar.

Applications for academic year 2013-14 in the

DDVE programme can be submitted until 16

April. Hurry up!

Markko Karu

In product development, DDVE combines different disciplines.

Business sense is a must for every project


Competition researchers will, and top managers in the majority of com-

panies all over the world should, celebrate next year the 35th anni-

versary of the publication in the Harvard Business Review of Porter’s

“How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy”. For researchers, the article

functions as a unifying tool for a new avenue of research and for man-

agers it is a systematic, well-founded practical tool for the creation of

competitive strategies.

The most important factor in the competitiveness of nations is produc-

tivity and universities have a key role to play there. They create new

knowledge that later becomes the basis for innovation. Universities

provide input into the competitive structure of the country and act as

providers and improvers of an innovation-friendly business environ-

ment. This environment has been improved directly by the Tallinn Uni-

versity of Technology (TUT) through its technical faculties and indirectly

through the better management and internal cooperation practices

that have been introduced by the School of Economics and Business

Administration.

Competitiveness and UniversitiesSmall nations and regions of bigger countries with finite resources can

only prosper in the global economy by increasing their competitiveness.

Among the solutions is developing readiness for both technical and or-

ganisational innovation.

Strengthening the capacity for innovation is one of most important roles

of TUT in Estonia. The process of innovation and its outcomes are essen-

tial for productivity growth and for increasing national income. The pro-

cess itself is associated with the creation of attractive, well-paying jobs.

The links between universities, productivity growth in countries and in-

creasing prosperity are well recognized around the world. Such higher

education institutions as TUT are primary sources of the most valuable

assets in the economy: highly educated people, knowledge and new

ideas, and the ability to implement them.

Cooperation, internationalisation and analytical skillsFor smaller countries such as Estonia and their firms, the rules of the

game are often set outside of their borders and beyond their influence.

In such an environment, hard work is needed locally to cope with the

challenges of international competition.

Recent empirical findings and the endogenous growth theory explain

one of innovation’s sources as being derived from a suitable combina-

tion of labour and knowledge. Another major source of innovation is

the combination of human capital and enhancement through university

research.

Improving The Competitiveness Of The Nation Text: Enn Listra

/ Professor of Finance and Banking at TUT

All nations seek to become more competitive and try to create

a better life for their citizens. Being more competitive in today’s

world means being internationally competitive. Universities play

a key role in the cooperative effort between business and public

entities. The School of Economics and Business Administration

of the Tallinn University of Technology has introduced a master’s

level business programme in Finance and Economic Analysis in

pursuit of that goal.



The basis for innovation and productivity growth is high levels of tech-

nical skills, which must be supported by organisational efficiency. The

personnel in firms must have economic knowledge, and be capable of

(international) cooperation and high level business analysis to compete

in the present changing business environment.

A new curriculum adding to competitivenessIn a research project carried out recently in the US, Finland, the UK

and Norway, and led by the MIT Industrial Performance Centre, five

of the 16 university roles in regional innovation-led growth pathways

were the following: promoting and assisting entrepreneurial businesses,

education and manpower development, global best practice scanning,

convening forecast exercises, and constantly developing responsive

curricula.

Indeed, all of these are present in the Tallinn University of Technology.

Business education is important and one of the recent developments

in the TUT curriculum portfolio is the new programme of Finance and

Economic Analysis. The programme is taught in English in the most in-

ternational learning environment in Estonia, in the new building where

the School of Economics and Business Administration is located. The

programme sets high requirements for students and is the only master’s

level business programme in Tallinn that has a daytime format. How-

ever, the schedule is structured in a way that enables students to have

part-time jobs.

The programme in TUT satisfies both local needs and interna-

tional standards of business education. Designed to meet the high

level of requirements set by international accrediting bodies, the

programme also incorporates most of the professional knowledge

seen as necessary by such professional organisations as the CFA

Institute.

The programme became possible because the demand for specialists

with high analytical skills was met by the university’s resources. At the

moment, TUT has the best human resources and infrastructure in the

three Baltic countries, providing financial and quantitatively oriented

business analysis education that is interdisciplinary and connects knowl-

edge and skills in the business, economic and IT areas.

The programme Finance and Business Analysis does this based on

recommendations received from future employers during the develop-

ment process of the curriculum. And indeed, employers of the pro-

gramme’s graduates are already using the courses provided in it in their

training.

Programme’s quality and competitivenessRosalind Williams of MIT has stated that “knowledge is global but

learning is local“. In the new programme, the two levels are intercon-

nected in a unique way, which creates quality at an international level

and also takes into account local needs.

The graduates of the programme have high analytical skills, and the

capability of international cooperation. The seeds of future business

networks are planted by the opportunity to study with people from a

number of different countries. Graduates have all the necessary skills to

work in the increasingly challenging internationally connected environ-

ment of competition.


In June 2012, the President of Estonia, wearing a bow tie, presented the Young Cultural Achievement Award to Tanel Veenre (36), also wearing a bow tie. The award recognised Veenre as a jewellery designer who had made an international breakthrough. Yet Veenre is also a design journalist, book author, photographer, initiator of fash-ion events and projects, and a lecturer. What is his secret?

>

Tanel Veenre’s Kingdom And Trophies

Text: Anneliis Aunapuu


I CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Text: Anneliis Aunapuu

51

PORTFOLIO_TANeL veeNre

Trophy V I Neckpiece 2012

balsa wood, oak, marble,

artificial resin, silver, cosmic dust

Photos: Tanel Veenre / styling: Aldo Järvsoo / models: Hedvig, Birgit

52

Heart V I Brooch 2012

wood, bone, silver

Heart VI I Brooch 2012

wood, ebony, silver

53

Crown 2012

balsa wood, artificial resin,

cosmic dust

54

Trophy XII I Neckpiece 2013

balsa wood, artificial resin, silver, cosmic dust

55

Trophy I I Neckpiece 2012


56

Wild Beast III, IV, V & VI I Brooches 2012


57

Trophy VII I Neckpiece 2012

balsa wood, oak, artificial resin, silver, cosmic dust

58

Dust, Universe & Queen I Ear-rings 2010

balsa wood, agate, artificial resin,

silver, cosmic dust

Lessons in survival

Coming from a family of musicians, Tanel

Veenre believes that his life has just taken its

natural course, like that of a plant which flour-

ishes inland. Having commenced his course in

jewellery design in 1995, his talent was soon

spotted by Professor Kadri Mälk, whose rec-

ommendation enabled the young and inexpe-

rienced student to study at the Gerrit Rietveld

Academy in the Netherlands. He spent a com-

plicated year in Holland, as it involved not

only a course in his chosen speciality but also

a lesson in survival in a foreign environment.

Perhaps the tough university of life laid the

foundation for his amazing resilience?

As a jewellery designer, Veenre is riding the

carousel of international exhibitions. Besides

participating in more than a hundred interna-

tional group exhibitions, he has had personal

exhibitions in many European countries and, a

couple of years ago, also in New York.

At the grand jewellery design event “Schmuck

2013” in Munich, Tanel’s works were exhibited

in four shows. One of those was his personal

exhibition “My Kingdom”, which was also

shown at the Tallinn Art Hall some months

ago. Another exhibition, which the artist con-

siders to be the most important one in terms

of his career, was with 17 other invited classics

of the jewellery world at the impressive mu-

seum Staatliche Antikensammlungen. “The

opportunity to spend a week in Munich and

receive immediate feedback from those who

admire my designs—the visitors ranged from

students from all over the world to powerful

art collectors—enabled me to put myself in the

big picture,” explains Tanel.

Like an orchestra

As a productive jewellery designer, Tanel Veenre

manages to be equally visible in creating, ex-

hibiting and representing. For the readers of

the daily Eesti Päevaleht, he keeps his thumb

on the pulse of Estonian design. In addition,

he is a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of

Arts, developing and expanding the curricu-

lum. Besides his daily work, he is always in-

volved in some one-off challenge. At the same

time, he admits that he has become increas-

ingly selective about what he commits himself

to: he tends to avoid all kinds of social events,

preferring to spend time working in his studio.

How does he manage it all? “I am able to really

focus,” Tanel admits, “I manage my time with-

out any waste. For example, when I arrive at my

work desk, I am totally present and my fingers

start to create immediately.”

Tanel considers it increasingly important to

write his own story. Images are no longer just

images, and jewellery is no longer just jewel-

lery. To create means to allow access to the

artist’s world. This is also a reason why Tanel

persists in making Facebook entries both in

text and images (see www.facebook.com/

tvjewellery). He is always accurate and concise

in his words, but never dull.

A different kind of jewellery

In his review of the jewellery exhibition “The

Coolest Corner“, published in the daily Eesti

Päevaleht on 30 January 2013, Tanel describes

how the Dutch gallerist Paul Derrez credited

the uniqueness of Estonian jewellery design in

his opening talk at the Oslo Design Museum by

saying, “There are two countries in the world

where contemporary jewellery design has a

clear identity: New Zealand and Estonia.”

The interesting question is why? During the

decades that Estonia was cut off from Eu-

rope, Estonian jewellery design continued

to develop strongly and followed its own

course. Today it has returned to Europe,

dragging behind it the clinking chain which

blacksmiths decorated, redesigned and en-

graved for decades. Perhaps it was elitist in

spite of the difficult times? Or perhaps the

decisive factor was the fact that, beginning in

the early 1980s, people started to look for in-

spiration from ethnic sources? Students went

on excursions to visit the Finno-Ugric peoples

in Siberia. Fortunately, the result was not

copy-pasting ethnic ornaments; instead, the

creative crowd became more educated about

symbols, deeper meanings and different ways

of looking at the world.

“Mythological mindset” was also some-

thing that Leili Kuldkepp, a leading figure in

the Metal Art Department of the Academy

of Arts, submerged herself in. She always

injected her students with a sense of inde-

pendent intelligence and a deep respect for

fossils.


The leading role of Kadri Mälk

Tanel Veenre praises the current state of affairs

in the Jewellery and Blacksmithing Depart-

ment of the Estonian Academy of Arts, where

as a tutor he helps to create a strong founda-

tion for students. The department is headed

by Professor Kadri Mälk, whose work is con-

structive and well thought-through. Mälk con-

tinues the leadership example of Kuldkepp,

especially with regard to independence of

thought. The most important factors are con-

sidered to be spirituality, humanity, caring and

a broad world-view.

Instead of trips to Siberia, the students’ world-

views are broadened by creative contacts with

the rest of the world. But the students have

been even more influenced by Kadri Mälk’s

own example and works, which possess an

amazing force.

Estonian jewellery had been, for a long time,

on a course towards artistic independence, but

Kadri’s works—independent art works with a

strong ancient mythical charge—were the

first ones bold enough to announce honestly

that their main aim was not to decorate their

wearer, but to be a friend, like a pet or a pro-

tector, like an impressive armoury. Each piece

of jewellery is like a personality surrounded by

a strong energy force.

Although it is innovative in form and in the

handling of materials, Kadri’s jewellery gives

the impression of being an ancient talisman,

telling a story which is larger than words.

From material shift to spiritual quality

Contemporary jewellery no longer needs to

be resilient or pretty. Instead, it has a social

dimension, expressing a manifesto: elitism, a

game, a joke, a challenge for the audience,

which may make you lose sight of everything

else. Estonian jewellery design long ago gave

up traditions in terms of material and function.

Orthodox jewellers probably shake their heads

when confronted with the choice of materials

today...

Kadri Mälk comments on this: “I have noticed

that people often approach jewellery by em-

phasising the choice of material, as if there

is no other access. They first look at how the

jewellery is made and what it is made of and

only then do they ask why. Of course, mate-

rials carry a certain metaphoric metatext. But

the feeling, the emotion or the after-taste cre-

ated by a piece of jewellery – this is much more

difficult to describe.”

Tanel’s creations are also characterised by a

great freedom when it comes to materials,

but this is not the most important thing. “He

excels at mixing all sorts of materials with al-

most violent elegance, using precious stones

and acrylic wax, organics and minerals all to-

gether without giving it a second thought. But

the impact of his works, a certain grand arro-

gance, the combination of precision of shape

and arbitrariness all evoke emotions. The idea

works. The quality of the soul has an impact,”

confirms Kadri Mälk.

Courage, energy and cosmic dust

Tanel has no prejudices when it comes to ma-

terials, but he has always been attracted by

everything organic. Even as a student he used

bugs, seahorses, and bird heads in his works.

The jewellery modelling has become increas-

ingly complicated; interesting additions from

the world of shapes have been added – objet

trouvé – which he processes and melts into his

compositions with acrylic wax, precious metals

and stones.

But he is increasingly attracted by pure mate-

rials. Chunks of jet, also known as gagate (a

compact and very light carbon fossil), which

he has recently received from Asia, make

the artist’s fingertips itch with excitement. “I

love to mould, engrave and grind, giving the

shape I want to wood, bone and stones,” ad-

mits Tanel. And this play of materials is always

crowned by some precious gem, even if very

small, which has been properly caged.

Screamingly Silent I neckpiece

wood, silver, cosmic dust

Kadri Mälk

Mid-day of Life I brooch

jet, silver, almandines, smoky quartz

Rabbit who has not decided whether to

be gray or pink I brooch

wood, silver, cosmic dust



Jewellery -- fashion -- photography-- book

Those design disciplines get along well with

each other and Tanel Veenre’s journey fol-

lows this winding road. A glance at the list

of his activities, from fashion shows to exhi-

bitions, from picture series to book editing,

could suggest that he is already a pensioner,

or at least has been cloned.

As with fashion, photography adds to jewel-

lery. For his exhibition “My Kingdom”, Tanel

asked his best friends to pose with hearts

shaped of wood. For the exhibition poster,

the photographer Toomas Volkmann also

portrayed the creator of the jewellery. The

inner tension of this extremely sensitive

photo is relieved by humorous regal quali-

ties, closed eyelids hiding a slight smile, the

artist seeming to balance himself on top of

the artistic ivory tower with elegant stability.

Whereas it is customary to show jewellery

and fashion on young and fresh models, Ta-

nel lately got the idea of making his jewellery

relate to a more multilayered, perfect, experi-

enced beauty. It is with this thought in mind

that he went to visit the actress Rita Raave

and the artist Enn Põldroos. Now you can ad-

mire a series of beautiful double portraits on

his homepage: portraits of the well-known

actress with portraits of jewellery by Veenre.

One cannot help but get lost in admiring the

multilayered beauty of these still lifes.

As photographs, jewellery arrives on paper.

Since 1999, the strong jewellery design-

ers Kadri Mälk, Piret Hirv, Eve Margus-Vil-

lems, Tanel Veenre, Kristiina Laurits and Villu

Plink have come together in the creative

group õhuLoss (Castle in the Air – ed.). Re-

cently the book Castle in the Air, bringing

together their works, was published by the

publishing house Arnoldsche Art. This valu-

able edition complements the body of publi-

cations on Estonian jewellery design.

Look further: www.tanelveenre.com

Often the final shape of Tanel’s jewellery re-

calls a heart, a crown or a mask: such are the

symbols which creep up on you.

These days he likes playing around with pel-

lets made of balsa (fishing corks), which he

became familiar with in his childhood, as his

father was a passionate fisherman. He joins

them into jewellery like Lego bricks, covers

them with artificial resin and colours them

with dust. Some shine as if they are polished

and wet, but mostly he leaves them misty and

pastel-coloured, sometimes adding a passion-

ately shining and gradient shade (which for

the monochromatic style of Estonian jewellery

is quite rare) and scattering fine cosmic dust

all over. Very symbolic indeed!

Emotion and explosion

What does the planning process of these mul-

ti-material jewellery pieces look like? “I don’t

start with technique. Nor with material. My

way of working is totally different,” says Ta-

nel. “Others usually have one or two pieces in

process; my workbench is full of stuff. I carry

them around, think, dream, search, until my

hands put something together and my mind

suddenly recognises the right thing. I trust my

hands. But when the piece is ready, I don’t

really care about its fate, as I can already see a

long line of images demanding their place in

the physical world.”

He has described his working method to

Aaron Decker from the American publi-

cation Art Jewellery Forum: “Sometimes

when I sit at my workbench, all suddenly

becomes clear, and I say, “Yes. I have to

make it this way!” It becomes so huge. It

is everything. All-encompassing. And when

it’s done, it’s not so clear any more. It has

lost its clarity during birth. So, I have to

start all over again. And again. Again.“ (You

can read the entire piece on: http://www.

artjewelryforum.org/ajf-blog/aaron-decker/

tanel-veenre-interview.)

This has such charming creative passion,

doesn’t it? Yet besides his creative, bold and

courageous nature, Tanel seems to be con-

structive, sustainable and consistent – a strong

pillar which can lift his intuition-fed creativity

as high as one can imagine.

Kadri Mälk sums up Tanel’s strengths: “The

human side of things is equally important.

Tanel is a great communicator, and intelli-

gent; he’s a thinker who can analyse quickly,

a sensitive philosopher. Despite his rapid shot

to fame, he has remained sincere and warm-

hearted, a person who does not step on

others but supports those who are weaker.

He has an amazing ability to work. A rare

talent.”

Actress Rita Raave in Tanel Veenre jewellery


Nafta Attracts International Film Producers To Estonia

Text: Jaanus Kulli

Photos: Nafta

“Why shouldn’t international film producers come to

shoot their films in Estonia?” asks Esko Rips, a producer

and one of the owners of the film production company

Nafta. “Not only will you likely pay less here than in a

number of other countries, but you receive much more

for your investment and the services are of excellent

quality.”



Nafta Attracts International Film Producers To Estonia

Nafta, a film production company founded eight years ago, has recently

started looking for foreign partners. “At the moment, we are research-

ing the market and promoting ourselves. Our aim is to attract film pro-

ducers to come and shoot in Estonia, ” explains producer Esko Rips.

“Why should international film studios come to produce in Estonia?

One of the reasons is our stable political system. Money does not sim-

ply vanish into thin air, as has been known to happen in some other

countries where labour costs are cheaper,” adds Diana Mikita, a junior

producer at Nafta. “We work together with some of the most talented

directors and cinematographers, and our experienced specialists have

versatile technical skills that allow our clients to order both pre- and

post-production services all from one place, saving time and money.”

“The name Nafta (in translation “oil” – ed.) was selected as it is short,

clear and memorable,” explains Esko Rips. “Whether we want it or not,

oil is something we come into contact with directly or indirectly every

day,” he says, with a smile.

Nafta produces commercials, shorts and full-length feature films, as well

as TV series. Therefore, Nafta is able to offer the whole range of services

of producing moving images, which includes pre-production, creating

the storyboard, casting actors and securing shooting locations, costumes

and props. This is followed by the production process up to editing the

film material and colour grading. In addition, Nafta also offers sound

mixing, after which the finished work is delivered to customers.

“This is the range of our services. Considering our technical basis, I

believe we are able to compete with foreign competitors in every

phase of film production,” confirms Esko. And Diana adds, “Anyone

interested in making a commercial or feature film can get a full pack-

age from us, from the creative side and technical implementation to

post-production.”

Best acknowledgement: cooperation with Disney Channel Russia

Therefore, Nafta is not only a service provider but a film production

company in its own right. During its first years of existence, the com-

pany mainly produced TV commercials. However, in 2007 Nafta started

producing short and feature films more actively, while also engaging in

the development and production of series. Today’s Nafta has co-pro-

duced the feature film “Bad Hair Friday” (“Vasaku jala reede”, 2012),

which attracted the 2nd largest audience to Estonian cinemas, and pro-

duced six short films, two TV series, two documentary films and about

250 commercial clips.

“With reference to short films, we’re proud to note that “Must Peeter”

(Black Peter – ed.) won the award for Best Estonian Short Film in 2008,”

says Diana Mikita. She adds that their largest TV series to date, the

science-fiction comedy “IT Planet”, which was contracted by the Esto-

nian commercial TV station TV3, was produced solely by Nafta Films,

whereas the youth series “Posle Shkoly” (After School – ed.) was co-

produced with the Disney Russia representation and was aired on the

Russian Channel One.

Esko Rips


“Working with Disney Channel Russia meant offering our whole range

of production services: budgeting, compiling the shooting schedule and

the technical team, finding locations and actors, procuring equipment,

bookkeeping and so on. This is one of our success stories we are really

proud of. Our co-operation ran so smoothly that Disney Russia decided

to do the post-production, as well as the colour grading and sound,

with our company as well – which wasn’t actually their initial plan”,

explains Esko Rips. “As mentioned above, we are able and prepared to

produce films from pre-production to the final product.”

“While there are production companies in the world who deal only with

a special genre or a particular part of the work-flow, in Estonia, where

the market is much smaller, it is not profitable to specialise in a narrow

niche yet. It is much more effective to produce a moving picture from

beginning to end because that way you can control the whole work-

flow more easily” say the producers. Due to the small size of Estonia,

we’ve learnt to be more diverse.

“Before commercial clips go into production, our director and designer

prepare their vision of what the clip will look like, including mood im-

ages of characters, environments, costumes, the visual tone, technical

camera tricks and the storyboard. For a client it is crucial to visualise the

final product as vividly as possible and we invest a lot of time and energy

in pre-production to minimise possible misunderstandings”, says Diana

Mikita, explaining the pre-process.

“One of our next projects is likely to be a co-production for a foreign

feature film. However, as it is in pre-production it is too early to reveal

any details,” says Mikita. “Their contribution is providing the budget,

the director and the producer. Our role is to find the art director, loca-

tions, actors and the entire shooting crew. Therefore, the whole pro-

duction and possibly the post-production might take place in Estonia.”

Old Town, Soviet times, modernism

We move on to discuss questions surrounding film locations. “It should

be emphasised that many film-makers from abroad have been positively

surprised when they arrive. You get off the aeroplane and can be on

location in five minutes and often you can fly back home the same

evening,” says Rips. “In many European countries, it is unheard of that

you can reach the location so fast. Another thing worth mentioning is

that we still have some nostalgic Soviet locations, abandoned factory

buildings etc.”

“Especially our Russian partners couldn’t believe how easy it was here

to get permission to shoot in the centre of the town at one of the main

squares, for example,” continues Diana. “Tallinn has a superb looking

Old Town, which has been part of UNESCO World Heritage since 1997,

and its main value is its medieval character and structure, which have

disappeared from other northern European cities. Tallinn’s Old Town has

an almost complete network of streets and land plot borders dating

back to between the 11th and 15th centuries, and lots of buildings built

in the 14th and 15th centuries, which have been preserved in their origi-

nal form. It can be said that Tallinn is one of the best preserved medieval

cities in the whole of Europe.”


I EDUCATION & SCIENCEI CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Nafta offers:

• Budgeting and research

• Location scouting and permits

• Regional and international casting services

• Best English/Russian-speaking crews

and technicians in the region

• Experienced set designers and construction teams

• Visual and sound post-production, VFX effects

In contrast, Tallinn has a contemporary modern city centre with high-

rise buildings. People from abroad have been impressed by our modern

business city. “The city’s trump-card is the diversity of locations: the Tal-

linn Old Town, Soviet-era locations and the modern business city. It is

added value that those locations are all easily accessible,” Diana sums

up. “Not to mention that production-wise we work 24/7 and our part-

ners have been impressed by our commitment.”

Estonia is not merely Tallinn though. “We have a wonderful untouched

landscape, plenty of forests, lakes, islands, idyllic seaside villages and

romantic manor houses,” explains Diana. “We have a lot to offer which

cannot be found elsewhere in Europe. In addition, our average popula-

tion density is 30 people per square kilometre. There are places in Es-

tonia where you can spend days without encountering another human

being,” she continues.

This is where Esko Rips adds with a smile, “Also, last but not least,

as international directors have pointed out, Estonia has many beautiful

people. Perhaps even if those young people are not ready for big roles

in feature films yet, they are certainly perfectly suited for commercials.

Estonia has produced supermodels since the late 90s, starting with Car-

men Kass, Karmen Pedaru and Kätlin Aas.”

Today Nafta’s main foreign partner is Russia,. They like the fact that we

still speak Russian. in addition to the fact that our crew speaks English,

Finnish and German. Another big market is certainly Finland, but Nafta

is also keeping an eye on Germany, Ireland and other Scandinavian

countries. A more exotic example of cooperation has been our collabo-

ration with the Egyptian film market.

Diana Mikita sums up their experience to date: “As the market is

small, we are looking outwards. There was hesitation at first about

whether we would be equal partners. But our experience shows that

we are competitive and our partners want to continue their coopera-

tion with us.”

At the end of the day, cooperation between countries always comes

down to relationships between people – which Esko emphasises is eve-

rything in the film business. “It all depends on the kind of connections

you form with people. We try to be open, friendly and conscientious.

I believe this is also what characterises Estonians on the whole,” says

Esko Rips, a producer from one of Estonia’s leading new generation

production companies.


The attack of house-size spiders, a killer virus which makes human

brains boil, a bloodthirsty yeti and a mass murderer in a clown costume

are just some examples of stories director Bill Rebane has screened. Add

to this plenty of fireworks, amateur special effects and abundant shrill

screams. All in all, the films of Bill Rebane are so bad that they are in a

class of their own. Those are scary movies which make you laugh.

The 76-year-old author is unknown to the masses, but for horror-film

fans he is a living legend. In his homeland, the United States, he goes

by the name Bill Rebane, but this is also one of his many disguises, as

his birth name is Ito.

“It started when I came to this country and went to school here and

every kid in school mispronounced my name,” says Rebane. “So finally

a friend of mine solved the problem and simply said – why don’t we just

call you Bill. And that’s how it stuck.”

Ito was born in 1937 in Riga, Latvia, to an Estonian father and Latvian

mother. But his family also has Prussian and Scottish blood. The Japa-

nese sounding name was given to him by his mother, who was inspired

by crossword puzzles.

“Therefore, there is always the question: who am I?” says Rebane,

showing old family documents. “By heart and by nationality I am very

definitely Estonian,” says the man of movies, who has both US and

Estonian citizenship.

His life story reads like an international adventure film, where wild suc-

cess alternates with great suffering. His father, Arnold Rebane, who was

recruited into the Waffen-SS during the Second World War, managed to

get his family over to Germany where, in 1952, they emigrated across

the Atlantic, to Chicago. As a 15-year-old, Ito’s first concern was to

learn English.

“I started going to movies and I sometimes watched as many as six to

seven movies in one day. And that’s how I learned English very quickly.”

After US Army service, Bill, now fluent in English, German and Estonian,

dived into the film business, travelling between studios in Germany and

America. At first he dreamt of a career as an actor, but was clearly more

talented in the business side of movies, and as a 21-year-old he was

already moving millions in the international film technical equipment

business. There are still some cinema technology patents in his name.

The first movie studio in the dairy stateHis life changed 50 years ago when he happened to go on a fishing trip

to Wisconsin, near the Canadian border. On an impulse, he bought an

old farm and a plot of land and moved his wife and children from the

city to the countryside. The farm, where horses and chickens were kept,

became the first official film studio, known as the Shooting Ranch, in

the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin was better known for its cheese than

its movies.

The money earned from shooting educational and chronicle films was

invested in increasingly ambitious projects. In 1975, Rebane shot his

second independent feature film, “The Giant Spider Invasion”, for

which he is still famous.

The Estonian-American film director and producer Bill Rebane, who

will soon celebrate fifty years in the movie business, wrote himself

into the history of freaky films with his bloodsucking giant spiders.

Text: Mihkel Kärmas

The Grand Old Man of Freaky Film History



“The spiders were very small all the way through the original idea, until

the distributor in Hollywood got hold of the script and said – can you

make me a 10-foot spider? Then it became 15 feet, then 20, and fi-

nally it became a 35-foot spider. So we did the best we could with the

budget,” Rebane says, recalling how the six-legged creepers were born.

The attack of the house-size spiders, who entered our dimension via a

black hole ripped by a comet, was shot with the help of local Wisconsin

people and the shooting locations were all within a radius of a few

miles.

“We decided that the only way we could make a spider that size was

by using an existing vehicle of some sorts. And the Volkswagen Beetle

was the answer. And then we had the problem of how to motorise the

legs. We decided to put nine kids inside the Volkswagen and put the

legs on springs and keep moving them up and down. Actually from

a distance the effect was reasonably good. But the moment you got

closer and actually saw what it was, of course we were lost,” Rebane

says, with a laugh.

Against all reason, the amateur film with very bad special effects and

a minimal budget became a big hit. During its first year of release, the

film, with a budget of 300,000 USD, earned 23 million dollars and was

one of the top 50 films screened in the USA. The giant spiders still bring

in money for Rebane. In 2011, he announced that he would start work-

ing on a musical based on the cult film!

Tasteless stuff sells tooBill was no fool. He learned an important fact: you can also make mon-

ey with bad films.

“Horror and science fiction were in and saleable. And I was not about

to make something to try to prove my artistic abilities and lose money.

I would rather look at it from a business standpoint. I’d rather make

something that is maybe mediocre, but makes a lot of money.”

This is how a bunch of curious anti-heroes made their way to the big

screen, starting with a toad-man with acid saliva and ending with a

monster-car bringing destruction in its wake. The critics may have

frowned but Rebane’s obscure films became a phenomenon. During

peak times, nearly 100 people were employed in his Wisconsin studio.

In 1989, when everything seemed to be on the way up, Rebane suffered

a sudden stroke. As this father of four had no health insurance, banks

started to ask for rapid repayments of their loans. The sad story ended

in bankruptcy.

After the debilitating illness and the court saga, Rebane—feeling disap-

pointed in the system—stood for election as governor of Wisconsin in

2002 as a protest candidate. Without success. In 2012, he announced

that he was running for US Congress, but his campaign never got off

the ground. He remains politically active, sharing his views on such is-

sues as gun control in his blog.

Movie guy and trade representativeIn 1992, Bill Rebane made his first visit to Tallinn since WWII. The coun-

try still recovering from Soviet power struck him as gloomy.

“It was horrifying. I remember all the stories my parents told me and I

stood on the 14th floor of the Viru Hotel, looked down on the city that

was half there and it was very sad.”

One of the stranger episodes in Rebane’s colourful biography is his short

career as a trade representative of the Estonian Congress to the United

States in the early 1990s. The first and only transaction during this ca-

reer is the unbelievable-sounding attempt to sell 26 Russian military

planes to the West.

“I had all the instruction manuals and what have you. But that ended up

bringing me nothing but aggravation because, I think, the CIA wanted

to buy them and that was the wrong connection. So I’d rather not talk

about that,” Rebane says mysteriously.

It took another twenty years from his visit to his fatherland before his

chef d’oeuvres were shown on the big screen in independent Estonia.

In addition to screening a retrospective of his films at the Haapsalu Hor-

ror and Fantasy Film Festival, in 2012 Rebane was awarded a Lifetime

Achievement Award, which the colourful cinematographer could not

come to receive due to health and financial reasons.

The foreign Estonian, who has shot twelve feature-length and a hun-

dred shorter films during a 48-year career, is currently living a low-key

life in the town of Saxon (200 inhabitants), in a roadside house, where

only the UFO figures in the yard bear testimony to his out-of-the-ordi-

nary life.




Estonian Music - The Best Kept Secret

Recently there has been talk of Estonian music as “the best kept secret” in international music circles. Why Estonia has suddenly become a magnet for music experts and music lovers is a question best answered by the young woman responsible for it all: Helen Sildna, the organiser of Tallinn Music Week.

Text: Piret Järvis

Photos: TMW


Vaiko Eplik & Eliit

Rubik

Iris

Iris



Every country has its own music face. For many people, Finland is the country of metal. Sweden is the kingdom of quality pop music.Iceland is the domain of fairies. Does Estonian music already have its own face?

This face is created by success stories. In other words, by those artistes

who have already reached fame. Like HIM and Nightwish from Finland.

Like Björk and Sigur Ros from Iceland.

I think in the Estonian case it is a combination of very many different

components. Our music is frosty, northern, experimental and melodi-

ous. At the same time, I believe that it is not a question we really have

to rack our brains over; it will just develop on its own. It would be

terrible if we decided that this was our face and then attempted to

squeeze ourselves into some box at any cost.

But what is the common denominator which gives an impulse to our contemporary music?

If we are looking for such influences in Estonia, we need to

return to our traditions. I think that the vocal skills that have

developed out of our choral music tradition are very im-

portant and significant. On the other hand, it has been

a strong classical music education which has shaped the

face of our music. Others are also benefiting from our

classical education. In Iceland, they have a saying that

every music school in Iceland has at least one Estonian

music teacher, and that is a fact.

Just five years ago, the Estonian music scene was a bit chaotic. Everyone was trying to make it on their own, to find out how to break out of Estonia. But there was no big breakthrough. Then you started Tallinn Music Week and suddenly things started to move. Today our bands are touring in neighbouring countries and many even further afield. What recipe did you use to make this caravan move?

Something which Risto Juvonen, the boss of the largest Finnish con-

cert management company Live Nations, said made me think: a music

market will not function stably until you learn how to manage your

own local talent. After all, concert activity based on an international

programme will always be somewhat arbitrary: we cannot take it for

granted that Madonna will come perform here every summer.

If you look at Finnish music companies, most of them are working with

Finnish artistes: organising their concerts, album sales and publishing.

The goal is to have a lively club music scene every week. Otherwise,

people will not even get used to listening to music. At the same time, I

started to visit festivals that were similar to what Tallinn Music Week is

today. In Finland, there is “Musiikki ja Media”, in Holland “EuroSonic”

and so on. I was startled to find everywhere how many interesting local

artistes came to these festivals. When I saw that, I decided that unless I

did it here, something like this might never happen in Estonia.

Tallinn Music Week takes place for the fifth time this year. How well has the festival been received by foreign specialists, the music press and the music industry?

Many people experience a total wow-effect when they come here. They

are amazed that nobody knows what’s going on in Estonia. They come to

a festival where they can see at least a hundred Estonian artistes, and this

year 165. The names on the programme are totally unknown and people

expect the worst. For example, in the first years people just knew that

Estonia had won the Eurovision once and the expectation of the festival

matched that: we were considered to be a europop country. Therefore,

the excitement about what was going on in our music scene was huge

afterwards. People are amazed that we have so much unique, special and

original music. What people value most is artistes who do not copy some

international format, but are unique and talented in what they do.

Outloudz

Ewert & The Two Dragons

Tallinn Music Week 2012 Opening. President Ilves


You said that people in international music circles are very positively interested in Estonian music at the moment. How is this expressed?

When I used to visit foreign festivals and events, it was a rule that I was

the only Estonian people had ever seen in their lives. Nobody knew

anything about Estonian music. Of course they knew Arvo Pärt, but the

general situation was that we did not exist on the world’s pop music

map. This situation has radically changed today. When someone says to-

day that they have not heard of Estonia, they are the one that looks silly.

Of course, such an awareness differs in different circles. We are cur-

rently well known with specialists, the music press and the music in-

dustry. But we have to reach the next level. We cannot yet say that we

have entered the mainstream media and appeal to the masses. But the

current state of affairs is a precondition for that happening in the future.

When will you feel that your dreams and goals of promoting Estonian music in the wide world have come true?

It is my goal that there will be a critical mass of Estonian artistes working

internationally according to their own goals in a free and organic way. I

cannot say that I want to see 10 Estonian artistes at the top of Billboard

or touring in Europe. I would rather see a critical mass of musicians who

have found their own way and their own audiences abroad and that

have managed to do it in accordance with their principles and their mu-

sic styles. I would like to see them all find their place in the world. And

I consider it very realistic that that will indeed happen.

What are the pluses and minuses of making music in Estonia today?

Once we saw a presentation by a very inspiring Icelandic manager

of music export, Anna Hildur, where the first slide said that the

motto of each Icelandic musician is: “Export or die!” The popula-

tion of Iceland is 300,000. In this sense we are in a much better

position with our 1.3 million inhabitants. But it is still a fact that

we have very many artistes and they can not all fit into the local

market, at least not so that they can live off of their work. It is a

fact that if you want to make music professionally and also live off

of it, your only chance is to work in the international market. We

have maybe five to ten artistes who manage to earn their living by

doing music only in Estonia. For the rest, there is not enough work.

But the advantage which is really making things easier at the mo-

ment is the fact that Estonian music is becoming internationally

famous as “the best kept secret”. Everyone is always looking for

the next interesting thing and in this sense we are managing to get

a lot done. It is a fact that people are really positively interested in

Estonia at the moment, in what is happening here. I would even

say that at the moment Estonian artistes have a better chance of

international fame than some British indie bands. This positive im-

age and the appealing story that you are a band from Estonia mak-

ing northern indie rock gives you a great advantage.

Bedwetters

Frankie Animal

Svjata Vatra

NevesisTenfold Rabbit

Leslie Da BassElephants from Neptune



We celebrate the 25th birthday of the Singing Revolution, night song

fests at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, the Estonian Sovereignty Dec-

laration and, last but not least, the first ever international rock festival

held not only in Estonia but in all of the former Soviet Union: the leg-

endary “Rock Summer”.

The Feeling...Nearly 60,000 people were listening so silently that you could have

heard a pin drop. On the stage was Steve Hackett, with his acoustic

guitar, playing songs of his former years with the world famous band

Genesis. ...John Lydon, formerly of the Sex Pistols, could, to his enor-

mous surprise, perform his songs together with the crowd – the audi-

ence knew and sang along all the way through. These are just some

flashbacks of the feeling at “Rock Summer ’88”, or “Glasnost Rock” as

the festival was also called.

Let’s travel 25 years back in time. It is 1988. Estonia is still part of

the Soviet Union but not for long. A sense of freedom is in the air

and in people’s hearts. In spring it bursts forth at the Tartu Pop Music

Days, when “Five Patriotic Songs” by Alo Mattiisen and Jüri Leesment,

specially written for the occasion, have their premiere, accompanied by

the first timid waving of blue-black-white flags. Three months later, at

the “Rock Summer” festival, an estimated crowd of 60,000–80,000

people join hands and sing, with tears in their eyes and lumps in their

throats, “Estonian I am and Estonian I will stay…”. For the first time in

more than 40 years, Estonia’s national flag is hoisted above the radio

tower of the Song Festival Grounds, and the number of smaller flags

in the hands of people is countless. For the first time in decades, we

could shout out loud “Freedom for Estonia!” without fear of being sent

to jail. Some years before, that would have led to repression from the

militia and intelligence service.

Everything that had been bubbling inside – the urge for freedom, nov-

elty, liberation, joy and rock music – forced its way out. The beloved

Estonian singer Ivo Linna, who also sang the “Five Patriotic Songs”, re-

calls: “No rock concert in the world can be compared to the first “Rock

Summer” festival. We could already sense freedom, which some years

before nobody would have even dreamed of. And artists from abroad

performing at the festival shared our excitement. It is really impossible

to put all that emotion into words.”

“Rock Summer 25” Unites Generations

In 2013, Estonia celebrates. First and foremost its 95th birthday. But there are many more memorable and emotionally charged events designed to remind us of the re-establishment of our freedom, independence and the blue-black-white national flag.


The FestivalA rock festival in the Soviet Union with foreign artists was

a total utopia. Estonians had never seen anything like that,

even through their “window to the world”: Finnish TV. And

now all that – rock music, foreign artists, a huge stage, pro-

fessional sound and a lighting system in your own backyard!

Three days in August gave people behind the Iron Curtain

the opportunity for the first time to feel as part of the world.

To come and perform on the other side of the notorious

Iron Curtain was equally utopian for the foreign artists: Big

Country, Public Image Ltd. and Steve Hackett from Great

Britain, Leningrad Cowboys/Sleepy Sleepers and Juice Leski-

nen from Finland, to name just a few. For them, the feeling

of unity flowing at the Song Festival Grounds was some-

thing extraordinary, something they had never felt before.

People thirsty for rock music, singing many of their songs,

no violence, generous hospitality… although there was a

lack of even the most elementary commodities people in

the Western world took for granted.

“The most important common denominator was the Sing-

ing Revolution. The urge for freedom brought people to-

gether, and made the hearts of the musicians and the au-

dience sing,” says Jüri Makarov, the organiser of the rock

event, in summing up the first “Rock Summer”.

“Rock Summer”, which became the biggest rock festival in

Eastern Europe, was held nine times altogether. Only once,

in 1990, was it cancelled due to political instability. The last

one was held in 1997. The time for big festivals in Estonia

was over.

The Faith This summer, on 15-16 June, a group of former team

members have decided to organise a one-time event –

“Rock Summer 25” – to celebrate the 25th birthday of the

first festival, with the desire to recreate once again that

magical festival feeling, which cannot be described, only

experienced.

“Although it is impossible to restore all that now, a quar-

ter of a century later, and that is not our aim, we would

still like to create that indescribable feeling as much as

possible. For former fans to live it through again and for

younger ones, who have only heard about it from their

parents, to have the opportunity to feel it for themselves,”

explains the promoter Jüri Makarov, describing the idea of

“Rock Summer 25” as a meeting place for younger and

older generations.

The two-day festival will be held, as is traditional, at the

Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. There will be three stages,

with music varying from guitar to heavy rock, from blues

to electronic dance music, from metal to hip hop, with

more than 30 artists. So far, 23 artists have been an-

nounced – Bryan Adams, John Lydon and the Public Image

Ltd. and Zucchero, to name a few – but there is a promise

of more to come.

Keep an eye on www.rocksummer.ee

Text: Maria Vakkrõõm

Photos: Mart Anderson


I TOURISM Fine Dining in Tallinn

The history of Restaurant Gloria goes back to 1936, when the night pub

“Dancing Paris” opened in a building completed in the early 1930s. It

was the grandest in Tallinn at that time. In 1944 it was renamed Glo-

ria, and thus the restaurant has shared its hospitality for more than 75

years. Gloria has offered hundreds of thousands of memorable taste

experiences and happy moments to important guests to Estonia: Prince

Charles, Pope John Paul II, the Rolling Stones and Sting, among others.

Situated in the Old Town, the mission of Gloria, based on the traditions

of Estonian and French gastronomy, is to introduce its guests to dif-

ferent cuisines and classic Old European tastes. Innovative in form but

conservative in content, Gloria has always offered the best ingredients

found in Estonian nature throughout the four seasons. The magazine

Condé Nast Traveller selected Gloria among the 100 most interesting

restaurants out of 2,000 entries, emphasising its unique interior, the rich

choice of wines, professional service and unforgettable tastes.

Restaurant GloriaMüürivahe 2, Tallinn, Estonia

Reservations +372 640 6800

www.gloria.ee

Gloria


The Wine Cellar is situated in the cellar of Restaurant Gloria, inside the

ancient city wall. It is the oldest of its kind in Tallinn. The vinoteque is

the best guard of wine quality, meeting the requirements of the most

demanding wines, as the lighting, temperature and humidity of the cel-

lar are most suited to this. Wine enthusiasts from all over the world

have enjoyed the cosy setting and the generosity of our sommeliers. The

selection of wines at the Gloria Wine Cellar is considered to be the best

in the Nordic countries. The selection includes Vega Sicilia and La Nieta

from Spain, Sassicaia, Solaia and Gaja wines from Italy, and the French

legends Petrus and Le Pin. Most producers from the Grand Cru manors

are represented here.

In addition to wine, the treasure chamber includes a wide selection of

grappa, brandy, calvados, port and Armagnac brandy. The best ideas for

gifts can be found in the row of armagnacs from 1955 to 1992.

Gloria Wine CellarMüürivahe 2, Tallinn, Estonia


www.gloria.ee

Gloria Wine Cellar


I TOURISM

The building at Vene St 33, now hosting the beautiful Restaurant Ego-

ist, was once owned by Baron Johann Carl Girard de Soucanton. The

baron was, due to his French and German origin, an admirer of good

food, a great traveller and very popular among the people. The de-

scendants of the Soucantons, who currently reside in Baden-Baden,

Germany, highly value the milieu of Egoist, which maintains the life-

style and heritage of their forefathers.

Since 1998, Egoist has entertained those who have a small and curious

egoist in them that does not tolerate mediocrity and is not satisfied

with anything less than the best. We have hosted kings and princes,

presidents and admirers of good food. Egoist has been recognised as

the Best Restaurant in Eastern Europe by the San Pellegrino List of the

World’s 50 Best Restaurants and as the Best Estonian Restaurant offer-

ing coastal cuisine, according to the Skärgårdssmak Competition. Two

chefs from the Egoist’s kitchen have earned a spot at the most pres-

tigious international cooking contest, Bocuse d’Or. Restaurant Egoist is

for those who are looking for something more than a hectic lifestyle

has to offer. It is our mission to preserve original flavours of world gas-

tronomy and the traditional restaurant culture of Old Europe.

Restaurant EgoistVene 33, Tallinn, Estonia


www.egoist.ee

Egoist

Fine Dining in Tallinn


Estonia in briefOfficial name: Republic of Estonia

State order: Parliamentary republic

Area: 45,227 sq kilometres (17,500 sq miles)

Population: 1,294,236 inhabitants: 67.9% Estonians, 25.6% Russians and 6.5% others

Population density: 28.6 people per square kilometre. Over 70% reside in urban centres

Capital: Tallinn with 392,331 inhabitants (as of 2011)

Other major towns: Tartu (98,514), Narva (65,706), Pärnu (44,437), Kohtla-Järve (41,992)

Administrative divisions: 15 counties (maakond), divided further into 226 local municipalities,

incl 33 towns and 193 rural municipalities (vald)

Islands: 1521, the biggest being Saaremaa 2,671 sq km, Hiiumaa 989 sq km,

and Muhu 198 sq km

Biggest lakes: Lake Peipsi 3,555 square km (1,529 sq km belong to Estonia),

Lake Võrtsjärv 271 square km

Longest rivers: the Võhandu River 162 km, the Pärnu River 144 km,

and the Põltsamaa River 135 km

Highest point: Suur Munamägi (Great Egg Hill) 318 m

Air temperature: annual average +7˚C; January -3.5˚C, July +20.3˚C (2011)

Official language: Estonian, a member of the Finno-Ugric group. Russian is widely spoken.

Many Estonians speak English, German, and Finnish

Alphabet: Latin

Religion: Predominantly Protestant (Lutheran)

Currency: euro (EUR)

Average salary (1st quarter of 2012): 792 EUR

Driving: Right hand side of the road. Speed limits in town 50 km/h, out of town 90 km/h.

International driving licence required

Weights and measures: Metric system

Electricity: 220 volts, 50 Hz

Country calling code: 372

National flag: Blue-black-and-white

National holiday: 24 February (Independence Day)

National anthem: Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm (My fatherland, my joy and happiness)

National flower: Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus)

National bird: Chimney swallow (Hirundo rustica)

Member of EU, NATO, OECD, WTO, Schengen area

For more travel details, please consult the

sources below: www.visitestonia.com

(Estonian Tourist Board), www.riik.ee/en.

Tourist information centres are located in all

larger towns.

The Tallinn Tourist Information Centre in the

Old Town is located at 4 Kullassepa Street - no

more than 10 steps from the Town Hall Square

(ph.: + 372 645 7777, e-mail: turismiinfo@

tallinnlv.ee). The Tallinn Tourist Information

Centre in Viru Keskus (ph: + 372 610 1557,

610 1558), open every day 9 am - 9 pm, is lo-

cated in the centre of the city. A wide selection

of maps, brochures and publications in several

languages (largest selection in English) can be

found at local bookstores and tourist informa-

tion centres.

VisaAs of 21 December 2007, Estonia is a part of

the Schengen visa area.

Nationals of EU and EEA member states are

free to enter Estonia. The required travel docu-

ment for entry is a national ID card or passport.

Nationals of the following countries do not

need visa to enter Estonia, and can stay for up

to 90 days in any 6-month period: Andorra,

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada,

Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, El Salvador, Guate-

mala, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Israel,

Japan, Macao, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco,

New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,

San Marino, Singapore, South Korea,

USA, Uruguay, Venezuela. The re-

quired travel document for entry is a

valid passport.

Citizens of countries not mentioned

above require a visa to enter Estonia.

Visitors arriving in Estonia with visa

must have national passports valid

at least 3 months after their planned

departure from Estonia.

Children aged 7 to 15 years must have their

own passport when travelling to Estonia or, if

they are registered in their parent’s passport,

must have their photo next to the name. Chil-

dren under 7 years need not have a photo if

they are registered in their parents’ passports.

Persons above 15 years must have a separate

travel document with photo.

For detailed information on visa requirements

and entry rules, please consult the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs website at www.vm.ee/eng.

ArrivalBy plane: Recently renovated, the Tallinn Len-

nart Meri Airport, just 3 km from the city cen-

tre, is welcoming, modern and user-friendly.

Among other amenities, travellers have access

to a free WiFi area in the transit zone. The air-

port’s 24-hour customer service telephone is

+372 6058 888.

Tartu Airport is situated at Ülenurme, near

Tartu. Flights from Tartu to Helsinki depart six

times a week.

Regional airports are located in Kuressaare

(Saaremaa), Kärdla (Hiiumaa), and Pärnu; these

provide no regular international connections.

By ship: With over 6 million passengers an-

nually, the Port of Tallinn is undoubtedly Es-

tonia’s main gateway. Large passenger ferries

arrive from and depart for Helsinki and Stock-

holm regularly. The 85-km Tallinn-Helsinki line

is served by ferries that make the journey in

2 hours; hydrofoils and catamarans make

the trip on 1.5 hours and operate between

April to November-December, depending on

weather conditions. Travellers should note

that different ferry lines depart from different

terminals and harbours. The City Port with its

four terminals is a 10-15 minute walk from Tal-

linn Old Town; the Paldiski-Kapellskär line uses

the Port of Paldiski, about 50 km from Tallinn.

By car: Border checkpoints greet travellers

entering or departing the country by way of

the Estonian-Latvian border points at Ikla (the

Tallinn-Riga highway) and Valga, as well as

on the Estonian-Russian border at Narva (the

Tallinn-St. Petersburg highway), Luhamaa,

Koidula and Murati. On the Estonian-Russian

border, all traffic is subject to border formali-

ties both when entering and leaving Estonia.

By bus: Not only is travel by bus the fastest

and most convenient mode of international

public transportation in the Baltic states, it also

offers excellent value for your money. Regular

connections service all major cities in the Bal-

tic countries and St. Petersburg. Eurolines Lux

Express and Hansabuss offer comfortable Riga

Airport transfers from Tallinn, Pärnu, Klaipeda,

Vilnius, Panevezys, and Šiauliai. Prices start

from €20.00. A useful tip: Regular passenger

buses have priority at the border checkpoints,

so travel is smooth.

By train: There is only one international over-

night train to Moscow.

Practical information for visitors


I TOURISM

CustomsWe suggest travellers consult with the Esto-

nian Customs Board help desk (ph.: +372 880

0814 or www.customs.ee) for details. The

limit on import of alcoholic beverages from

outside the EU is one litre for beverages over

22% alcohol content, and two litres for bev-

erages up to 22%, and four litres for wine.

Import of tobacco and tobacco products from

non-EU countries is limited to 40 cigarettes or

100 cigarillos or 50 cigars or 50 g of tobacco

products. Counterfeit goods, including pirated

CDs, video and audio tapes, are prohibited

by law. A special export permit is required for

specimens of plants and animals of endan-

gered species, protected species and hunting

trophies (please contact the Nature Conserva-

tion Department, Ministry of the Environment

for details). Articles of cultural value produced

in Estonia more than 50 years ago also require

special permits (please contact the National

Heritage Board).

Getting Around EstoniaInter-city public transportation Public buses are the easiest, cheapest and most

convenient solution for visiting Tartu, Pärnu or

any other of the larger towns. Buses from Tal-

linn to Tartu depart every 15-30 minutes, to

Pärnu every hour. On weekdays, seats to these

destinations are almost always available even

immediately before departure (watch out for

special events). For weekend travel or trips to

more remote locations with fewer connec-

tions, it is advisable to buy tickets in advance.

The Tallinn Bus Terminal is located at Lastekodu

46. The timetable is also available online at

www.bussireisid.ee and ticket information is

available at telephone +372 6800 900.

Travelling by car

Travellers hoping to see more of the country

and the rural areas it would be best advised

to travel by car. The roads are quite good and

traffic is light. Crossing Estonia from north to

south or west to east by car takes approxi-

mately three to four hours. All major car rental

agencies have offices in Tallinn. It is also pos-

sible to rent the car in Estonia and drop it off

at a rental agency in Latvia or Lithuania, or vice

versa. The speed limit in rural areas is 90 km/h

and in cities 50 km/h. In some areas the high-

way speed limit is increased during the sum-

mer months. Headlights and seatbelts (front

and back) must be on at all times. Driving un-

der the influence of alcohol or other intoxicat-

ing substances is punishable by law.

Local transportTaxis: Taxis must clearly display their fares,

driver’s taxi service licenses, and a meter. The

initial charge for entering a cab ranges from

2 to 3.5 euros. Different taxi companies have

different rates, but the average charge per

kilometre is 0.5 euros. There is no additional

charge for ordering the taxi by phone, and it

usually takes the cab just five to ten minutes to

arrive. All taxi drivers must give you a receipt

(in Estonian, ask for “Kviitung, palun”). Locals

usually give the exact fare and no tip. As in

most major cities, some dishonest drivers at-

tempt to overcharge unsuspecting passengers.

If in doubt, note the taxi company and license

plate number.

Public transportation: Tallinn has a public

transport network of buses, trams and trol-

ley-buses. Other Estonian towns have buses.

Check the time schedule for Tallinn bus lines

for any bus stop at www.tallinn.ee/eng.

Free public transport: As of 2013, all resi-

dents of Tallinn, students and passengers 65

years and over are entitled to free travel on

Tallinn public transport.

Tickets for visitors: The Public Transport Card

Ühiskaart may be purchased for the price of

€2. This smart card, onto which you can load

money, or e-tickets can be purchased from

post offices and online at www.pilet.ee. Per-

sonalise the card for €1 at the point of sale or

for free at www.pilet.ee/yhiskaart.

If you are using pay-as-you-go credit, your

smart card automatically calculates the cheap-

est fare within the next 24 hrs (never more

than one-day travel card). Validate your jour-

ney with Ühiskaart immediately after entering

the public transport vehicle. You can also buy

tickets from kiosks and from the driver (single

ticket €1.60 and student ticket €0.80). Try to

have precise change (cash only) for the driver.

The ticket is valid for one journey only in that

specific vehicle. Discounts only for ISIC Scholar

and Student Card holders. Holders of a vali-

dated TallinnCard are entitled to a free ride.

AccommodationsAll major hotels in Tallinn have been newly

built or completely renovation in recent years.

Despite annual additions to the number of ho-

tels and rooms, it can nonetheless be difficult

to find a hotel room on short notice (particu-

larly over the week-end). For the best selec-

tion, we urge visitors to Tallinn and the rest of

Estonia to book hotel rooms in advance. For

more details, see the Estonian Tourist Board

website at www.visitestonia.ee.


MoneyOn 1 Jan 2011, Estonia adopted euro as its

currency thus replacing the Estonian kroon

which had been the only valid currency in

Estonia since 1992.

Most larger hotels, stores and restaurants ac-

cept Visa, MasterCard, Eurocard, Diner’s Club

and American Express. However, it is advisable

to carry some cash with you.

Traveller’s checks can be exchanged in most

banks but are less likely to be accepted in

shops. Eurocheque is the most widely ac-

cepted traveller’s check, but American Express

and Thomas Cook are also accepted. Banks

are plentiful and easy to find in Tallinn. Most

are open from 9:00 to 18:00 on weekdays,

while some offices are also open on Saturday

mornings. All banks offer currency exchange

services. Exchange offices can also be found

in larger hotels, the airport, harbour, railroad

station and major shopping centres. ATMs are

conveniently located around town; instruc-

tions are in English, Russian and Estonian.

Telephones and InternetThe country code of Estonia is 372. Dial 00 for

outbound international calls.

The GSM mobile phone system is available;

please check compatibility with your operator.

Public Internet access points have been set

up all over Estonia. They are located in local

libraries and post offices. There are over 100

wireless free Internet zones around the coun-

try, many of them in rather unexpected places

- beaches, Old Town squares, stadiums, and

concert halls.

Emergencies112 is the emergency number for ambulance,

police and fire department. The police can

also be reached directly at 110. Emergency

numbers can be dialled free of charge. Select

pharmacies are open 24-hours-a-day in many

major towns. The one in Tallinn is located at

10 Pärnu Road (opposite the Estonian Drama

Theatre); the one in Tartu is located in the

Town Hall building (Town Hall Square).

National HolidaysEstonians celebrate January 1 as New Year’s

Day, a rather slow and quiet day as people re-

cover from the festivities. Shops open late and

banks are closed. February 24, Independence

Day, is celebrated with a parade of the Esto-

nian Defence Forces at Vabaduse väljak (Free-

dom Square). May 1 is a bank holiday, similar

to Good Friday and May Day. June 23 is the

biggest holiday of the year as Estonians cel-

ebrate Midsummer Eve and the Victory Day in

commemoration of the 1919 Battle of Võnnu,

and June 24 is St. John’s Day (Midsummer).

August 20 is the Day of Restoration of Inde-

pendence (1991). December 24 (Christmas

Eve), December 25 (Christmas Day) and De-

cember 26 (Boxing Day) are usually spent at

home with families.

FoodTraditional Estonian cuisine consists of simple

peasant food, such as cottage cheese, pota-

toes and bread, all of which are still important

components of the local diet. The Estonian

dark bread is the main staple missed by Esto-

nians abroad. Typical Estonian dishes do not

feature prominently on restaurant menus, and

traditional home cooking is more likely to ap-

pear at small eateries in remote areas. Still,

a few establishments have made Estonian

specialities their niche; to sample Estonian cui-

sine, try the Vanaema juures, Kaerajaan and

Kolu Tavern (Open Air Museum) in Tallinn,

and the highly recommended Muhu Kalakoh-

vik and Lümanda söögimaja on the Island of

Saaremaa.

The list of the top 50 Estonian restaurants can

be found at www.flavoursofestonia.com


I TOURISM

DrinksThe main drinks in Estonia are beer, wine and

vodka. While many young city residents opt

for beer or wine, the older generation and

rural folk tend to prefer vodka. In the 1930s

Estonian vodka made it into the Guinness

Book of Records as the strongest vodka in

the world (96º). Local brands of beer enjoy

a very strong market position in Estonia. The

two main breweries are Saku and A. Le Coq.

Saku is Tallinn-based, and its corporate col-

our is navy blue while A.Le Coq is brewed in

Tartu and its colour is red. There are also many

smaller breweries. A full list of Estonian beers

is posted at www.BeerGuide.ee

Spirits also include some traditional liqueurs.

The famous Vana Tallinn (Old Tallinn) has a 45º

alcohol content, and is coincidentally made

from 45 ingredients - the recipe is known only

to a handful of people. Indeed, the legendary

19th-century kristallkümmel (caraway liqueur)

has made its long-awaited comeback.

Estonian wines, made from currants or other

local berries, are rather sweet. Wine lovers

usually prefer imported wine, of which there

is an ever-increasing selection at stores and

vinoteks. A very popular and refreshing non-

alcoholic drink is kali, made of bread, malt,

rye or oats flour and yeast; it has a character-

istically dark brown colour. It was with this

drink that the Estonians forced the Coca-Cola

company into submission, or at least into a

business deal. Kali was enjoying phenomenal

sales, while Coke was not selling up to expec-

tations. It was then that Coca-Cola decided to

broaden its horizons by buying one of the local

kali trademarks in order to make a profit on

the stubborn Estonians.

EntertainmentThe entertainment scene in Estonia is vibrant

year-round, providing visitors and locals alike

with a long list to choose from. Concerts, fes-

tivals theatre, street raves, DJ competitions –

Estonia has it all. It is not by chance that both

Tallinn and Tartu have their own opera and

ballet theatre. Tickets are an excellent value

for the money; concert tickets cost around 10

euros, and best seats at the opera are yours for

about 25 euros. For more information on the

concert schedule see www.concert.ee; the

programme for the national opera is posted

at www.opera.ee. Tickets can be bought at

the box offices or via ticket agencies located in

all larger supermarkets, or via Internet www.

piletilevi.ee.

Even the most sceptical museum-goer is bound

to find something intriguing in Estonia’s large

selection of museums, which feature every-

thing from history, art, photography to toys,

chocolate, musical instruments, even wax fig-

ures and many other topics. Most museums

are closed on Tuesdays and many on Mondays

as well. It is advisable to have cash on hand

as many museums do not accept credit cards.

Tallinn is also bustling well into the night with

booming and blooming club scene. Clubs are

usually open and packed with energised vibes

from Thursday to Sunday, with Friday and Sat-

urday drawing the liveliest of crowds. In addi-

tion to local and resident DJs, clubs frequently

present guest performers from London, the

US and other club hubs. For those looking for

a more mellow night on the town, Tallinn’s

street are brimming with pubs, vinoteks and

bar-restaurants, many of which offer live mu-

sic even on weekdays. Rather take in a movie?

Films in cinemas are shown in the original lan-

guage with subtitles.


ShopsSouvenir shops in Tallinn and most other tour-

ist locations are open seven days a week,

10:00-18:00 or 19:00. Big supermarkets and

hypermarkets are open seven days a week

from 9:00-21:00 or 10:00-22:00. Department

stores close a few hours earlier on Sundays or,

in smaller towns, may be closed on Sundays.

Smaller food shops may have shorter open-

ing hours. Some 24-hour shops can be found

as well. Other shops usually open at 9:00 or

10:00 and close at 18:00 or 19:00; they of-

ten close early on Saturdays and are closed on

Sundays. The majority of shops accept credit

cards, with the exception of smaller stores and

stores in rural areas.

SouvenirsSouvenir and shopping preferences vary

hugely but there are certain souvenir gifts that

have gladdened many a heart. Estonian handi-

craft comes in many forms. There are woollen

sweaters and mittens with local ethnic pat-

terns, linen sheets and tablecloths, crocheted

shawls and veils, colourful woven rugs, hand-

made jewellery and glassware, baskets, and

an array of wooden spoons and butterknives

made from juniper. Fine and applied art for

show and purchase is on display at art gal-

leries around the country, featuring graph-

ics, glass, ceramics, hand-painted silk scarves

and leatherwork. Various herbal teas from

wild plants are available at pharmacies. Local

honey – pure or flavoured, e.g. ginger, is an-

other delicious treat. In rural areas, you may

find hand-milled flour. And those who keep

coming back swear by the Estonian black rye

bread. To bring home local spirits, popular

choices include Vana Tallinn or kristallkümmel

liqueur or local beer. And there is no place bet-

ter than Estonia to buy Estonian music.

CrimeAlthough common sense is advisable in all

destinations, Estonia gives no particular reason

to be excessively worried. Do not walk the un-

lit and abandoned areas alone at night. Do not

leave bags or items of value in the car, as not

to tempt car thieves or robbers. Pickpockets

may operate at crowded tourist destinations

in Tallinn, so make sure your wallet and docu-

ments are stored safely.

LanguageEstonian is not widely spoken in the world, so

Estonians do not expect short-term visitors to

master the local language. Still, local people

are thrilled and pleased to hear a foreigner say

“Tere!” (Hi!) or “Aitäh (Thank you) in Estonian.

Knowledge of foreign languages is naturally a

must for hotel staff and numerous other pro-

fessions in the service sector. Many people are

fluent in English, particularly the younger ur-

ban generation, and a great number of people

also speak Finnish, due to Finnish TV, Finland’s

close proximity to Estonia and the great num-

ber of Finnish tourists. German is less widely

spoken in Estonia, although previous genera-

tions have often studied German, not English,

at school. Russian-language use has dropped

to a point where older people no longer speak

the language well and the younger generation

have already chosen other languages to learn

at school. Studying French has become more

popular over the last few years but the number

of people who speak French is still quite small.

An English-Estonian dictionary is available on-

line at www.ibs.ee/dict.

EstoniansEstonians are typical Nordic people – they are

reserved, not too talkative and speak rather

monotonously, with very little intonation. All

this may give one the impression of coldness

bordering on rudeness. But rest assured, this

is not the case, and the speaker may actu-

ally be extremely well-meaning, even excited.

There are several well-known Estonian sayings,

such as “Think first, then speak”, “Weigh eve-

rything carefully nine times before making a

move”, and “Talking is silver, silence is gold”.

It is, therefore, no wonder that the people are

not very good at small talk, do not waste too

much time on grand introductions, and usually

come straight to the point. This is why Estoni-

ans’ English may sometimes sound shockingly

direct. There is, however, often a subtle irony

involved in Estonians’ utterances - delivered

with a serious face and just the slightest twin-

kle of the eye.

Estonians are relatively individualistic. There

is a saying that five Estonians mean six par-

ties. Even though people agree on the final

objective, they insist on reaching it in their

own ways. Estonians also value their privacy.

In the old days, it was said that the neigh-

bour’s house was close enough if you could

see the smoke from the chimney. Modern,

tight-packed urbanites flock to remote coun-

tryside on the weekends to enjoy more space

and privacy.

Even though guests at birthday parties and

concerts are rather quiet and subdued in the

onset, they warm up eventually and turn into

a direct opposite of their day-character, as you

are likely to see in Tallinn’s clubs.


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Life in Estonia, spring 2013. Global Business Services

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Transcript of Life in Estonia, spring 2013. Global Business Services